Next Hundred

Posted on April 30, 2010 by fsdthreshold

We’re entering a new era here: this marks the 101st posting on this blog. That’s right: there have been 100 so far. That does not seem possible, does it? We’re opening a new pack of a hundred.

This blog is too nice a thing to let languish or evaporate. By “nice,” I don’t mean my posts: I mean this gathering of friends. Part of my struggle during this long silence has been that I’ve felt I’ve said everything I can possibly say about writing. I’ve told my stories. I’ve asked my leading questions, and we’ve had some great discussions and wonderful times. I was seriously feeling that a blog is a thing with a limited lifespan, like every other creature that breathes upon the Earth, and I was thinking that maybe this one had come to its end.

But there are always new stories to tell, right? Let’s forge ahead and see. There may be more undiscovered rooms down this dark corridor. There may be another valley beyond this ridge, and another ridge beyond that. The road, as we noted in the very first entry, goes ever on, and it is not for us to decide where it ends. Though we curl up under a tree to sleep the sleep of exhaustion, there comes a time when squirrels throw nuts on our heads, and it’s time to get up and walk again.

So let’s start with a writing update.

I started writing The Sacred Woods on April 23rd of last year (the possible birthday of the possible man who may have been Shakespeare). I started writing my new novel, The House of the Worm, on April 22nd of this year. This is my season for starting books. Chaucer was right: it’s the month for starting pilgrimages.

Doing some quick math here: I’m about 5,500 words into the draft of The House of the Worm (hereafter designated as THOW) [you can pronounce it either as “though” or as “thou”–it’s up to you]–and I’m truly excited about it. What keeps us writers going is the belief that this is the one: this is the best thing by far that we’ve ever done, and it’s the one that will reach the masses, and it’s the one we’ll be remembered for. We go through that every time, even if we’re writing a short story. But that’s good. As my good and wise friend Marquee Movies has said, “You’re on a path. Keep breaking new ground. Keep striving to be the best writer you can be.” And as marching band leader Mr. Smith (whom I’ve quoted before) said, keep doing the halftime marching show better every time you do it. I can honestly say with THOW that I’m breaking new ground (for me), and it feels very, very good. As for the content: all I can tell you right now is to look back at the previous posting. See those two paintings entitled The House of the Worm (I & II)? Those were a large part of the inspiration. . . . and so were several other things. As usual, various disparate elements have coalesced into a book idea.

The Sacred Woods (TSW) has gone forth and been rejected by most of the greatest editors in the business. (How’s that for name-dropping?) My agent has been valiant and amazing in getting it read by all sorts of top-drawer people, and it’s been both exhilarating and frustrating to hear about their reactions. Ninety-five percent of them have gone WAY out of their ways to write wonderful, heartfelt rejection letters about how much they loved the book, how they lost sleep all weekend and ignored their piles of work to finish reading it, even though they knew they were going to have to turn it down. The fifteen or so young-adult editors mostly said they themselves loved it, but they thought it was too adult for their lists — it would go over kids’ heads. We’ve heard back from two adult editors so far who have said they loved it but that it falls through the cracks between children’s fiction and fiction for grownups.

Don’t you wish we lived in a society in which labels weren’t important? I ask you: when you find a book you love, do you care what part of the bookstore you bought it in? I wish more publishers would care less about pigeonholes. “This book I’m crazy about, it — what? You say it’s a children’s book? — Oh. Well, then, forget what I said. I don’t like it so much after all.”

One editor, complaining about the narrator’s voice (at times very young, at times more young-adult), popped out with, “but I’m not always right. I had a problem with the narrative voice of The Lovely Bones, too, and we all know how that turned out.”

So, yeah. That’s the report on TSW. It’s a good book that no one can buy, which is exactly what Dragonfly was — except Dragonfly had some scary elements, so Arkham House bought it. But TSW is still out there: it’s really just begun its rounds of adult editors, so there’s still plenty of hope. All it takes is one. Another wise friend pointed out that what TSW is is “a British children’s book” — which really makes sense. In the U.K., a proportionately larger number of kids are still taught the love of reading. My agent is looking into possibilities there, too.

“Glory Day” (the story, not the poem) is still under consideration at Cicada.

As far as I know, The Star Shard is still scheduled for a Fall 2011 release from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I’m currently waiting for the editor to send me her revision notes so that I can overhaul the manuscript. At last report, she was swamped with her Spring 2011 books and hadn’t yet started on Fall.

Agondria came back from the respectable Canadian publisher who had been very seriously considering it. I bounced it next off a likely U.K. publisher who turns out to be currently closed to submissions. The editor of Black Gate had requested a look at more of the stories, so currently I’m giving him a chance to read them. One of the stories is scheduled to appear in the very next issue of Black Gate — Issue #15 — this fall, under the title “World’s End.”

So anyway, the new school year is three weeks underway. For the first time ever, I have a Russian student, a Spanish student, and a French student among my Japanese students. (I love how, in a French accent, the World Wide Web is pronounced “ze Ahntarnet”!) Seriously, it’s very good for all the students to have some additional accents and cultural perspectives. I’m grateful that those international students are there (in recent years, I’ve had students from China, Korea, Malaysia, and Vietnam, too).

The cherry blossoms are over, and we’re still shivering here. I hope some of you scientist types will explain to me just why this phenomenon is called “Global Warming” when every season is getting colder and colder.

I’ve been listening to Celtic/Irish/Scottish music — my latest discovery is a group called The Tannahill Weavers.

And finally, the movie awards: the first runner-up for Best Movie Recently Seen By Fred is District 9. This is what science-fiction should be like. Nothing is wasted: the writers knew exactly where to start and where to stop. It’s a very intelligent film, original and fresh in many ways.

And the hands-down winner: The Wolfman. I simply cannot say enough good things about this movie. Excellent storytelling, great casting and acting, brilliant directing — but the truly breathtaking elements are the sets and the lighting. Talbot Hall and the English countryside of the 1890s are a spectacle, an atmospheric extravaganza. I’ll go on record as saying that, for me, The Wolfman was more visually stunning and satisfying than Avatar, which I also enjoyed. But that’s just me! Give me spooky moors, rambling estates much declined from their former glory, Gypsy camps, and dark woods.

Honorable mention also goes to the musical Nine, which has much to say to us creative types — about our priorities, about how we should live. The last scene is unforgettable.

Oh, and the Australian film Rogue is definitely worth checking out — if, like me, you count Jaws among the half-dozen best films ever made.

As the Jeff Bridges character says in Crazy Heart: “It’s great to be back!”

Talk to you again soon.

Pictures at an Exhibition

Posted on March 24, 2010 by fsdthreshold

The time has come to reveal my latest avocation. I’ve been messing around with acrylic paints for the past month. There was a time back in my college years when I experimented with visual art — acrylics and oils. I didn’t go very far with it then, but for the past year or so, the urge had been building in me to try it again. I had a great epiphany: if you feel like painting, you don’t have to imitate photos. You don’t have to paint rustic barns, farm ponds, or covered bridges (though you can if you want). So in this month of March, I’ve taken up the brush again and decided to be as weird as I want.

Don’t expect too much from the images you are about to see. Think kindly of them, because I haven’t had any training whatsoever. I simply wanted to try a form of expression that’s different from writing — to exercise parts of the imagination that don’t necessarily get to work in the written word. And anyway, I think it’s good to stretch ourselves and to try new things now and then.

I’ve found painting to be extremely satisfying and relaxing. It’s a challenge of just the right sort. Well, I know you’re already scrolling down to see what I’ve got here and aren’t in the mood just now to wade through any more preliminary rambling. All right, all right! Scroll down, already! I’ll present each image, and then provide some explanatory notes.

The Uncanny City is a nickname some friends and I have for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These first two paintings are intended as a diptych: a

The Uncanny City (I) -- Left

single image spread over two panels. At Pittsburgh, the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio River. With three rivers and valleys and ravines yawning on every hand, Pittsburgh is, for one thing, a city of bridges: it has 446 of them — more than are in Venice, Italy. The city also has 712 sets of stairs, making up more than 24,000 vertical feet — a greater vertical distance than you’ll find in San Francisco, Portland, and Cincinnati combined! My impressions of Pittsburgh are of steep, wooded mountainsides receding into the mist; ancient, often little-used stairways ascending and descending, often in the most unexpected places; crumbling

The Uncanny City (I) -- Right

 stoneworks — actually old foundations and cellar entrances, I’m told, but reminiscent of portals into subterranean realms. At night, there are winking lights on the towers, on the bridges, on the slopes, and reflected in the water. It’s a city once choked in industrial grime, but now considerably cleaned up for a new era. It’s called a “renaissance city,” reborn from the ashes of fiery forges, and now growing in many new and exciting ways.

My paintings here are meant to reflect the Pittsburgh that I see, like Middle-earth, a place built over the ruins of the past, with half-buried  secrets showing through the leaves: a place of whispers, echoes, moonlight, ghosts, and things uncanny . . . where dark doorways stand open, and stairs might lead anywhere.

The Uncanny City (II) -- Left

The Uncanny City (II) -- Right

Kind of fun, huh? When I was doing the first set of those, I didn’t like them until I put in the stoneworks and stairways floating in the sky. That element is what, for me, laid in the intangible quality of Pittsburgh that I was trying to capture — something like what Neil Gaiman described in Fragile Things as “a room that’s locked but isn’t there.” If you put each pair side-by-side, the left panels line up with the right, continuing the image. It’s a popular thing to do with fantasy book series, for example: to have a picture that extends across all the covers when the books are laid out adjacent to one another — and/or possibly another image that runs across the spines.

Anyway, here’s one I call Shadowland:

Shadowland

The somber figures troop in a weary file through a country of gloom and shadows. Beneath a gap in the clouds is a forest aglow with sunlight. The figures react to it, but trudge past; it is not on their path — they are either unable or unwilling to go there. Do they regard the lighted country with longing, despair, awe, consternation, terror, or a vague uneasiness? I’m not sure what to make of the fact that the walkers’ legs are more canine than human.

Steampunk

I like the colors and composition of this one. Dirigibles, gears, pipes, dials, steam, mysterious strangers in Victorian garb, and a pocket watch — what else is there to say? — Steampunk!

Self-Portrait

Heh, heh! — But which figure is the self-portrait? Or are they both? Is the picture a kind of mirror? That’s a wall and window dividing it down the center, if you can’t tell. The faun is dancing in the moonlight outside the cottage where the writer listens, watches, and scribbles by the light of a lamp and candles — taking the dictation of the summer night. Let me show you the components of this one up closer:

Self-Portrait (Detail)

Self-Portrait (Detail)

March 2010

No, this one’s not a painting. It’s a picture of me painting at my aunt’s house, where I was visiting in Illinois this month. I’m grateful to my aunt and uncle for sacrificing this room: for a few weeks, they couldn’t really walk through it, with all the painting supplies strewn everywhere.

My Work Table

The House of the Worm (I)

A ripe, autumnal fruit is honeycombed with arches, passages, and stairs: the delvings of the worm, who sits in his easy chair, visible through an upper window as he smokes his pipe. Through another window, a portrait of a worm is visible hanging on a wall. The worm has made this fruit his home. This painting and the variation which follows were inspired in part by William Blake’s poem “The Sick Rose.” Are these pictures purely whimsical, or are they pretty dark in theme? You decide!

The House of the Worm (II)

In some ways I like this refinement better: I wanted the fruit to be more clearly an apple, and this version is less cluttered than the first. Here we have the addition of the ladder, welcome mat, and mailbox, and the worm’s head is visible. But he looks a bit too much like the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, which I don’t intend. I like the way the shapes of the arches look very much like crawling worms themselves. I like to nest images one inside (or atop) another, as in this next one:

Cassie's Summer

Cassie is my aunt and uncle’s border collie. She’s not really green — I took some artistic license on that point. Aunt Alice requested a portrait of Cassie, who is my daily walking companion when I visit. (Don’t miss the clouds!) Wouldn’t this make a good Cricket Magazine cover?

Still Life

In this one, the eerie faces emerged first. I knew it was about them, but I didn’t have the context — the juxtaposition that makes for an interesting painting. Just when I thought this picture would be a lost cause, I realized what it needed: lots of ordinary fruit to give the faces their place as sources of disquiet.

Now here are the two that, for the present, are probably my favorites:

The Dawn Engine (I)

It’s probably best if I don’t even attempt to explain. Make of it what you will. Again, I had to paint a second, alternate version:

The Dawn Engine (II)

This second rendition makes me think of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu stories. . . .

And let’s end on a more comforting note:

House of God

I’d like to try something else along these lines when I’ve gotten a little better; it uses a wash technique to simulate light shining through stained glass. The statues along the bottom were painted in shades of gray and blue, then covered with a thin, watery layer of another color once they were dry; I like how the highlights show through. I like the compositional balance of the picture. Yeah, I know that one window looks an awfully lot like a dart board. . . .

So there you have it — my first round of acrylic pictures. I intend to keep working at this, so I’m really curious to know what you like and what you dislike about these.

Of course, I’m not really a painter, so 1.) you won’t hurt my feelings if you hate them, and 2.) I’d better turn back to some writing one of these days.

Until soon!

Movie Lines: Answers

Posted on March 10, 2010 by fsdthreshold

Before I forget, I’ve noticed an interesting linguistic phenomenon that appears in the speech of Midwesterners. (Maybe it’s used in other parts of the country, too, but where I’ve heard it has been in the Midwest.) When some people make the possessive of the plural “you guys,” they say “your guys.” Have you noticed that? They’ll say, “I’d like to get your guys opinion.” I would say, “I’d like to get you guys’ opinion.” Interesting.

Anyway, I’ve finally put up the answers to the movie lines posting. For ease of checking, I put them right into the previous entry itself, so you can see the answer below each line. Did anyone get them all right? How did you do?

What Movie?

Posted on February 11, 2010 by fsdthreshold

[This post has been modified from its original form: it now includes the answers.]

“And now,” as Monty Python says, “a bit of fun.” Here’s a game Marquee Movies and I used to play in college. (Well, he played it with pretty much everyone — and I suspect most of us have played it before to one degree or another.)

The objective is simple: I throw out movie lines, and you try to identify the films they’re from.

I’ve limited myself to lines I’m pretty certain of. But still, I’m working from memory here, not scripts, so I can’t absolutely guarantee the accuracy, but I think these are correct to about 95% or more — close enough, anyway, to make the game work. My apologies to any screenwriters whose lines I’ve butchered.

Ready? Okay, here we go. . . .

1. You Americans are all the same: always overdressing for the wrong occasions.

Raiders of the Lost Ark. Arnold Todt says the line to Marion inside the tent. I always thought it was an amusing line because Todt himself insists on wearing his stifling long coat in the desert heat.

2. A: This place scares me. B: Really? I find it stimulating.

The Name of the Rose. The first speaker is Adsol, the young novice monk, who is creeped out by the gloomy “remote abbey in the dark north of Italy” where, to quote Brother Hubertino, “the devil is hurling beautiful boys out of windows.” The second speaker is, of course, William of Baskerville.

3. A: How old are you? B: Twelve. More or less.

Let the Right One In. Speaker A is the boy Oskar; Speaker B is Eli, his mysterious new neighbor.

4. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.

A River Runs Through It. From the closing narration, this is one of my all-time favorite final passages in a movie and book (it’s the same in the book).

5. Ice is civilization! — and the same movie: Dead things go downstream.

The Mosquito Coast. The speaker is Alley (sp?) Fox. This is the movie that showed us all that Harrison Ford could play much more than the dashing swashbuckler. I’ll never forget the weekend in college when I finally convinced a girl I was pursuing to go out to a movie with me. She was Japanese, and we saw this film, in which Alley Fox repeatedly expresses extreme dislike for Japanese and Japanese products! (The girl sort of smiled vaguely, and I was wishing I could melt into the seat cushions.)

6. A: Something’s going to happen. B: What? What’s going to happen? A: Something wonderful.

2010: Odyssey Two. Remember when 2010 was WAY off in the future, a science-fictional date? For that matter, remember Space 1999, which was also set way in the future, when we were sure we’d be hopping shuttles to the moon and to neighboring planets all the time? Anyway, Speaker A is the entity that was David Bowman, and Speaker B is Dr. Heywood Floyd, played by the wonderful Roy Scheider.

7. [Character speaks in a muffled voice, face mashed against a wall.] Put . . . the candle . . . back!

Young Frankenstein. The speaker is Dr. Frankenstein, the descendent of the first Dr. Frankenstein, back when the family was pronouncing the name differently.

8. They’re all so beautiful. . . . I should have three heads!

Amadeus. The speaker is Mozart, trying on wigs.

9. It’s too early in the day for killing princes.

Troy. The line is delivered by Achilles, when he encounters Hector in the Temple of Apollo on the coast of Troy.

10. I never drink . . . wine.

Dracula. I’ve heard the anecdote that Bela Lugosi did not speak English when this film was made. He would repeat the lines phonetically that the script people told him to say. So he was saying lines he didn’t really understand, which works perfectly for making his character seem unearthly.

11. A: Son, someday all this will be yours! B: The curtains?

Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The speakers are a king and a prince.

12. Ze Arctic? Ze ArcTEEC? [Character name], zat’s ridiculous! Eet can’t be done! Zat’s impossible! We would need food, supplies, fuel for ze motairs. . . .

The Island at the Top of the World. The speaker is Captain B. (I have no idea of how to spell his name. It’s pronounced Brey-YOU.) He’s ready to launch his airship Hyperion on its brief maiden voyage with pomp and ceremony, but the ship’s new owner, Sir Anthony Ross, announces that he wants to depart with the Hyperion immediately to the distant and perilous Arctic to search for his lost son. This was the movie that had us building dirigibles out of balloons and tiny cardboard boxes (and lots of string). And Chris and I would write stories / make dramatic audio tapes in which the adventure began with taking a dirigible into some remote wilderness. And you know what’s in the wilderness: Lost Civilizations and Dinosaurs.

13. You know, I think there’s a secret to this island. And whether we go or stay, live or die, may depend upon that secret.

I’ll turn the microphone over to Mr. Brown Snowflake, who will tell us that the answer is The Land that Time Forgot. The speaker is the captain of the U-33, Baron Manfred Friedrich von Schoenvorts. Someone should have warned the U-boat’s crew that the wilderness is full of Lost Civilizations and Dinosaurs.

14. [Character speaking disdainfully of Americans]: They can even vulgarize ice cream.

Tea with Mussolini. I don’t remember the character’s name, but she’s a well-bred Englishwoman, gazing across the patio to another table, where a server has just delivered the sort of gaudy, excessive monstrosity that Americans think makes a good sundae.

15. “Beware the beast Man, for he is the devil’s pawn. Alone among God’s primates, he kills for sport, or for lust, or for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother’s land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him out; for he is the harbinger of death.”

Help me out again, Mr. Snowflake! Is this The Planet of the Apes or Beneath the Planet of the Apes? It’s one of the two. It’s a passage from the Sacred Scrolls of the Apes.

16. Don’t go! I’ll eat you up, I love you so!

Where the Wild Things Are. The speaker is . . . the Wild Thing that goes by initials — C.W.? I’m not sure of the initials.

17. A: [Character name], what on Earth are you doing? B: [Character name], I’m tryin’ to drive you to the stoh.

Driving Miss Daisy. Speaker A is the eponymous Miss Daisy; B is Hoke, her new driver, hired by her son against her wishes.

18. [Character surrending the bullets from his gun to be hidden]: Don’t put ’em in the peaches.

Witness. Another Harrison Ford line here. His character, John Book, is hiding out and recuperating in an Amish community, where firearms are not acceptable. The last time Rachel hid his bullets for him, it was in a not-quite-empty can of flour.

19. A: [Character name], do you know what a blood oath is? B: Yes. A: Good, because you just took one.

The Untouchables. The first speaker is Malone, the second is Eliot Ness.

20. A [proposing to climb a makeshift rope]: I’m the lightest. B: But I’m the most foolhardy. [Same movie]: Go now. Go now. Go north.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. I saw this film at least twice in the theater when I was a kid. The characters are trapped inside the Well of the Oracle, which has become a near-inescapable oubliette. Haroun wants to climb the makeshift rope made of the crew’s sashes; Captain Sinbad insists on taking the risk himself.

21. He lost his sight in the Big War. I believe it was the Battle of the Somme. He doesn’t much like to talk about it. Do you, [character name]?

Places in the Heart. The speaker is the banker. He’s talking about his brother, Mr. Will, played by John Malkovitch. This is on my short list of truly great movies.

22. Back East, someone’s wonderin’ “Now why don’t he write?”

Dances with Wolves. The speaker is the crude Timmons, as he and Lt. Dunbar gaze at a skeleton found among the prairie grass.

23. “Through dangers untold and perils unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City, to take back the child you have stolen.”

Labyrinth. The speaker is Sarah, the film’s main character, who has to get all the way through the Labyrinth and brave its dangers to rescue her baby brother Toby from the Goblin King. (I know someone will remind us that technically it’s more of a maze than a labyrinth, but Labyrinth makes a better title, okay?)

And finally, this is one I’m paraphrasing. I may be off on the wording or order, but the concept overshadows the wording, so I think it’s still fair:

24. It doesn’t ruin it. It completes it. The pain then is part of the joy now. And the joy now is part of the pain then.

Shadowlands. I’d long been curious about this movie, but I may never have seen it if Jedibabe hadn’t made it possible. I’m grateful! — it’s a very good one. The speaker is C.S. Lewis’s wife. She says this on an idyllic day they’re spending together in the countryside, where they’ve tracked down a beautiful valley in a picture that hangs on Lewis’s wall, a magical place that really does exist on Earth. She reminds Lewis that she’s going to die of her terminal cancer. He tells her not to spoil the perfect day with such talk. That’s when she says this line.

It seems to me that human life is like a musical chord. It’s made up of notes from the past and the present. (And the future, too, for that matter, although we can’t fully hear those notes yet — but we know they’re there, filling out the chord.) The point is that who we are now is also made up of all these notes from the past. At the height of their happiness, Lewis and his wife know that she will die, and he’ll be alone again. But his extreme sorrow then is an affirmation of the happiness they have together; and that happiness will help him then, in his grief. It’s all part of the chord.

At times when I’m not too self-absorbed, I’m able to draw some comfort and strength from those parts of the chord that are there in the future, unheard as yet; and always I can draw it from the resounding notes of the past, which are a part of me.

There you have it: an even two dozen. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little romp. How did you do?

A Writer’s Life Considered

Posted on January 30, 2010 by fsdthreshold

A writer’s life, like any life, should be well-considered. We should take stock periodically and ask ourselves what we’re doing, where we’re going, and if we’re on course. Is there a better route we might be taking? Do we have exactly the things we need in our packs? Should we be walking faster? — slower?

A comment came in yesterday by regular contributor jhagman that encourages just such an assessment. It was written in response to my previous post, “Durbin Finishes Reading a Book!” You can read the original comment there, and I’m going to quote it here in its entirety, but the gist is that jhagman takes me to task for my slow reading speed.

Let me preface this by saying I in no way intend this as a “counterattack.” All civil, legitimate expressions of opinion are welcome here. And I’m fully aware that the commenter meant it constructively, implying that s/he’s waiting for my next book and calling me one of jhagman’s “favorite writers.” So, thank you, jhagman! I do appreciate the thoughts! I offer this post in a friendly spirit, as the self-reflection they triggered. Here’s the comment:

Fred, reading this post made me sad! I think it was Samuel Johnson who said, “It takes a half of a library to make one book.” At your rate of reading, it might be a lifetime of 100 years before we see another book! While reading ESL papers of students does constitute “reading,” unless they are like Joseph Conrad, you spend the bulk of your year not reading literature . . . ugghh! Can they pay a person enough to live like that? When I was at Fort Benning (paratrooper school) I got through two books — The Trumpet Major by Thomas Hardy, and David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, and the school I was in was for me no picnic. If I can do it, you can do a lot better with your reading! Lecture over, but when one of my favorite writers reads a book a year. . . . Enough said.

First, jhagman, you know from this blog that I’m the first to lament my slow reading pace. Two or three times I’ve studied books on speed-reading techniques and have tried to master them, but it’s never worked out for me. Fiction is just too precious to me to zoom through without looking back. I agree with you that I should be reading more. If I knew a way to do so, I would.

But consider this: I have a friend, also a writer, who reads tons of books — book after book after book — and she feels she should be reading more. We could all be doing better. You should be reading more, jhagman! Why didn’t you read ten books in paratrooper school, you slacker? Think of all that time you have before pulling the rip cord, when you’re just twiddling your thumbs in freefall — what, may I ask, were you doing then?!  🙂 There are uncountable great stories and characters out there, waiting for us on the shelves, that will be waiting forever. We’ll never have the pleasure of most of them. We are limited creatures. In On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King acknowledges this. He allows himself time to read for pleasure in the evenings, but he says that at his age, he’s had to become much choosier about what he reads, because he doesn’t have time to read it all. (I “read” King’s book on cassette tape while walking, jhagman — do I get some points for that? :-))

I love the Samuel Johnson quote! — half a library to make one book. Richard Peck said, “We write by the light of every book we’ve ever read.” And Tolkien, of course: “A book like The Lord of the Rings grows like a seed in the dark, out of the leaf-mould of the mind.” Oh, I do not doubt that we become better writers the more we read.

But I would caution that that’s not everything. There was a joke (I think it was a joke) I heard about an aspiring violinist who couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t more successful, because he went to symphony concerts every night and sat in the front row. See the point? Reading books is fine — it’s necessary — it would be hard to be a concert violinist without ever having attended a concert as a listener. But sadly, there are aspiring writers who have read a hundred times more than I’ve read, but who never seem to get the pen to the paper, who never seem to finish a story of their own.

Another good friend, also a reader of this blog, once said to me that she feels she doesn’t have exceptional musical talent, but that she has the gift of truly enjoying music. Some people listen to a lot. Some people read a lot of books. Some go through whole DVD stores seeing every film that catches their interest.

Ultimately, I don’t think it’s about reading volume. There’s this famous advice to writers: “Don’t read 100 books. Instead, read your 10 favorite books 10 times each.” I don’t reach that goal, either. But when I do read a book, I digest it pretty thoroughly. I study nuances and structure, and I think about it carefully, while I’m reading and for weeks afterward. I often sigh with momentary envy at friends who are not writers, who can read without their crafter’s eye and mind automatically engaging — who can read irresponsibly, just dashing through the book. But my envy is momentary. (It’s like those times in the years we played Dungeons & Dragons, when now and then I’d want to enjoy the wild abandon of playing as a player-character, not running the show from behind the DM’s screen; so I’d beg some other member of the group to launch an original, separate campaign, and I’d play as a character for a meeting or two, swinging my sword and puzzling over riddles, finding delight in exploring the unknown — but then I couldn’t wait to get back into the DM’s seat.) In the end, what I love to do is write books. If that means the sacrifice is that I can’t read like a 12-year-old, barefoot and carefree — so be it. Heaven is coming in four or five decades at the most, and I’ll catch up on reading then. For now, I’ve got writing to do.

There was a year when I worked full-time at a Japanese company. It was ostensibly a “school,” a senmongakkou, but it was a company: the management’s only goal was extracting money from the students. Still, there were some dedicated teachers there trying to teach between a rock and a hard place, and I did my best to be one of them. That year, I was so physically and emotionally drained every day that there was no way I could write. That’s the one year I did quite a bit of reading. I read like a normal person — almost every night, and on the weekends. I finished reading quite a few books that year, and doing so was very nice — very calming and anchoring.

But it’s a tradeoff. For me, I think it’s possible either to read regularly or to write regularly. Reading is “for me” — it’s fun, and it feeds me. But writing is a calling. Writing is what leaves something behind in the world, something that I hope others may enjoy and benefit from. When I have to choose, I choose writing. Is anyone out there inclined to blame me? [Achilles: “Is there no one else?!”]

I was happy to hear Barbara Hambly at the World Fantasy Convention in Calgary say that when she’s writing, she has no time to do any reading; and she’s writing constantly — has been for decades — so she confesses that her knowledge of the genre is almost entirely from the books she read in her youth. So I figure if I’ve got Garth Nix on my side regarding character creation, and Barbara Hambly on my side concerning reading, I’m not alone.

Next, about the issue of day jobs: back in college, two of my closest friends and I made a promise to one another that we would never in life work long-term at jobs “just to make money” — that whatever we set our hands to in life, it would have merit, it would be worth doing. It would somehow glorify God, use our talents, and serve humanity. Except for a very few brief transitional jobs that enabled us to get from one situation to another, all three of us have kept that oath. (And that’s by God’s grace, of course — I can see now that there was youthful idealism and impetuousness in the vow, and there are plenty of people in this world who have no control over what they must do to keep food on the table. The three of us have been blessed that we were able to keep our rash vow.)

So, no, jhagman: at the senmongakkou, they couldn’t pay me enough to not-write. Once my contract was up, I was out of there, and I had a wonderful time explaining in great detail to my bosses why I didn’t want their juicy contract renewed. I took my soul and left. But now, at Niigata University, it’s my privilege to have classes full of excellent students who are, for the most part, eager to learn. I’m able to give them something. I know now what my gifts of perception, language, sensitivity, patience, flexibility, tomfoolery, clarity of explanation, compassion, organization, and dramatic performance are for. When I’m teaching writing, I’m teaching something very dear and real to me; and when I see the students’ final drafts, I know why it’s okay that I’ve labored over their rough drafts and answered their questions.

What value, you may ask, is there in English conversation? Well, I won’t get into the usefulness of communication in English in today’s world, but I will simply say that a university classroom is an overall experience. Some of the best things I got from classes in college had little to do with the content of the courses (and some did). When I was a student, I took notes on my favorite professors’ personal stories and philosophies just as eagerly as I took notes on what we were there to study. It might be said that my college major was “Froehlich and Lettermann” with a minor in “Sorensen.”

I’d like to believe that I’m helping my students a little farther along the path of learning “how to suck all the marrow out of life” . . . helping them to figure out what it’s all about, and how best to spend their time on this spinning rock.

Can you pay a person enough to do that? Well, no. I’m glad they do pay me something, because I have to pay bills. And I’m glad I’m doing the job.

But the story doesn’t end there. A university job allows more free time and autonomy of mind and spirit than any other job I’m aware of. I was able to write The Sacred Woods — a full-blown novel — during my first semester this year. As to whether or not you’ll have wait “a lifetime of 100 years” for the next book — well, I’m writing them, but I can’t control what publishers buy. Writing the books is the only thing I have any degree of control over. (And we do know that The Star Shard is still scheduled for Fall 2011 — so put that on your calendar!)

So, jhagman, shake my hand before we go away this week: we’re friends, you’re among friends here, and your comment is well-taken. You are not wrong. I will try to do better. Let’s all try to do better, each in our own vocations. As dear Professor Lettermann said (which probably had no direct connection to the class at hand): “One of the best things about our theology is that we don’t have to be what we’ve been.”

Or, as Scarlett O’Hara says, “Tomorrow is another day.” (But that’s in some book I haven’t read.)

But at the same time, I’ll go on making the decisions I have to make. Time is limited, and as I see it, the books I’m waiting to read are friends I can depend on. They’ll be waiting for me, whether I live long enough to open them or not. Their words and their writers, some long dead themselves, are cheering me on in my own task.

“That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” (Whitman, quoted in Dead Poets Society.)

The books that need me most are the ones waiting to be born.

Where the Ceiling Is

Posted on January 23, 2010 by fsdthreshold

A good friend, being complimentary of my writing, once said, “In your stories I always know where the ceiling is.” We were discussing settings and descriptions of place in the books we loved, and she meant (and I agree) that in my stuff, a firm grounding in the physical surroundings is essential. I’ve said it before on this blog (probably dozens of times now, in various ways), but I am truly a writer of place.

Almost invariably, my story ideas start with places I’ve been to . . . or places I’ve read about . . . or places I imagine. I’m often inspired by pictures — ones seen recently or remembered from childhood — photos, illustrations in books. Some settings just beg to have stories to take place in them.

I frequently linger and gaze into some lonely ditch where water gurgles from a culvert as if from the mouth of a cave — or where weeds stand thick in the tepid mire, a jungle in miniature laid out there just beside some ordinary road. I stop in mid-stride to peer into a thicket on the university campus (Niigata’s is wilder and woodier than most). The shade is deep under certain trees, with light shimmering somewhere beyond, as if somewhere among the tangles, a door into Faery has been left standing ajar. I know I’ve written before of the staggered line of potted pine trees on the traditional Japanese Noh stage — the differences in distance from the viewer meant to suggest passage into another world. These trees border the covered walkway by which certain characters enter and exit. If a ghost passes the trees, it is coming into this world from the realm of spirits. And that leads me to think about how so many writers throughout history have made use of forests as the avenues of passage into a supernatural dimension. Shakespeare, Hawthorne . . . I’m sure you can come up with a better list than I can.

And for what forests can’t handle, we’ve got caverns! And then there are rivers, the sea, and mountains. Do you follow me? My point is that, with the natural world on his/her palette, the painter of fantasy can do anything!

But coming back to “I always know where the ceiling is”: it’s not enough simply to evoke a setting and tip the hat to it only occasionally. I believe it has to be an inseparable part of the story’s fabric. The setting is always there from beginning to end, influencing — often determining — the things that happen. We can’t forget it any more than we can deny the real spaces we occupy in our lives. Oh, we can get lost in conversations or ideas, for sure, and that’s good to do. A story isn’t a real estate brochure, and if you stop with the setting alone, you don’t have a story yet. But if we forget where the ceiling is, we’ll bump our heads sooner or later. And we daren’t forget the yawning stairway.

Whoever does not fully appreciate the crucial importance of setting to story would do well to read Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” and “The Wendigo,” or most of Lovecraft’s stories, or watch Lawrence of Arabia or Field of Dreams. . . . Again, I’m sure you can make a more intelligent list than I can.

What I find quite often is that a vital consciousness of the setting helps to generate story ideas every bit as much as the actions and personalities of characters do. Having a map — and thinking about all that it was telling me — helped me immensely with the writing of Agondria. So did having my cousin’s graphite sketches, which spoke volumes about the characters’ surroundings.

I recently came up with this advice when another good friend and I were talking about writer’s block: I’m sure this isn’t original with me, but I suggested gathering some pictures that the writer found intriguing or inspirational — magazine photos, pictures from the Internet, whatever — and pretending that they were illustrations for the story under construction. There’s something delightfully satisfying about such a technique, isn’t there? It’s like making a mold of some object, then pouring some substance into the mold, then breaking the mold when the substance has hardened. We’ve made use of the intermediary vehicle — the visual images — to create something else, something of our own.

During the year that “The Star Shard” was being serialized in Cricket, I had the delightful privilege of answering questions from young readers on the magazine’s website; and a good many readers of Cricket are themselves aspiring writers. One question I was asked over and over again was, “How do you keep a story going? How do you know what to write once you’ve started?” My advice is that a stalled story can quite often become unstalled by the writer’s imagining him/herself to be in the story, a part of that described world. Look around, and pay careful attention to the details. Chances are good that, within minutes, you’ll know what has to happen next for your characters — and what has to happen after that, and after that. . . . I’ve noticed that, at times when the writing is going badly or I don’t know where the story should go next, it’s quite often because I’ve lost a sense of being in the setting — I’ve begun writing from some outside point. If the story becomes an abstraction, it suffers — at least in my writing.

“Where the ceiling is” makes me think of two other titles that put “Where” to good use: Where the Wild Things Are, which I’m planning to go see about 90 minutes from now. (It was one of my mom’s pet peeves when she’d ask schoolkids if they knew [she’d say the title of some wonderful book], and the kids would say, “Oh, yeah! I saw that!” — It bothered Mom that they knew the story only from its movie or TV incarnation, and had no idea that it was a book at all. Of course she didn’t take her irk out on the kids, but you can be sure she made them aware.)

For the record, I have read Where the Wild Things Are, so I’m allowed to see the movie. Yes, I’ve read the whole book! Yes, cover to cover. More than once!

And the other “Where” is Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein. Isn’t that a perfect title for a book of fanciful poems for children? That title alone should win prizes. It evokes the little grassy areas where kids play, where order and adult-determined pathways end. We all have such places somewhere near our homes when we’re kids — those pebble-strewn verges where dreams begin. The ground is always uneven there, isn’t it? It’s never level, and the grass doesn’t grow uniformly. There are taller clumps, there are old stumps, there are places worn bald by stones or by our feet, there are squishy places when it rains, and there are bright places that the sun bakes. I remember coming upon one such place in Niigata years ago, when a friend and I were making a bicycle odyssey to follow the entire perimeter of what’s called “Niigata Island” in a complete circle, heedless of typical routes. There was a place, on a windy ridge facing the sea, where the paved sidewalk just . . . stopped. The wind blew, and the grass riffled, and the sun sparkled on the waves — and there was simply no more pavement. It was pretty cool, and I thought at once of Shel Silverstein.

In all this issue of settings, I was thinking again of The Lord of the Rings. (How often our discussions of great stories lead us back there!) It’s been said by more than one scholar that The Lord of the Rings isn’t primarily a character story; it isn’t even really a plot story at heart. It’s a milieu story, and that means that we re-read and re-read it because what we love is Middle-earth. We want to go again to those wonderful places and hear the poetry and steep ourselves in the legends and histories and interconnectedness of it all. Tolkien knew where his ceilings were . . . and where the mountains were . . . and what was beyond them . . . and what the other names for everything were . . . and why. . . .

And I’ll go you one step further. (Is that even a legitimate expression?!) Much of what we’re enjoying in Tolkien’s settings isn’t something fantastic, exotic, or overtly magical. It’s an echoing stone chasm, a mighty waterfall, a mountain range, light slanting through quiet forest spaces, or landscapes rolling away under shifting clouds. Tolkien recognized that what is most numinous about the world is right here in our own world, and he knew it intimately. Tolkien, too, was a gazer-into-woody-corners. (I wonder if the Oxford of his day had any brushy nooks between buildings?) The story is told of how, when Tolkien and C.S. Lewis would take walks in the countryside together, Lewis preferred to stride along at a good clip, but he was forever having to stop and wait as Tolkien gawked at a tree or crouched to study some leafy shoot or patch of moss.

I’m going to quote here from Ted Nasmith, in his remarks prefacing this year’s extraordinary Tolkien calendar, which Nasmith illustrated:

“Other authors have well-developed descriptions of the lands their characters move through, both real and invented worlds alike, but somehow the combination of Faerie Tale structure wedded to a distinct delight in the minutiae and moods of nature has raised Tolkien’s sub-creation to a level few authors achieve. Some have even commented that Tolkien’s landscape constitutes a character of sorts, and this may be partly due to the tendency of the author — in fine faerie tradition — to blur the lines between his characters and creatures and their environment. . . .

“Clearly nature and animals interact with ‘people’ repeatedly as a central motif in Tolkien’s invented world, and since nature has long been a universal source of artistic and creative inspiration, visual artwork inspired by Tolkien’s works would not be satisfactory without making sure that illustrations also integrate the characters with the settings.”

What other writers do this well? This would be a good time to tell us, dear readers, about the authors and books you love. What are some other tales in which you always know where the ceilings are? Examples are quite welcome, too!

Durbin Finishes Reading a Book!

Posted on January 17, 2010 by fsdthreshold

Heh, heh! Yes, it’s worthy of a headline, because it happens so rarely. It’s a terribly busy time right now: this week, I’ve been correcting rough drafts of student essays from my writing class. They’re doing some great work, but checking the drafts is a major project requiring pretty much all free time. What’s made it a little more stressful is the timing — right now, my agent is waiting for me to get back to him on the draft of The Sacred Woods. He’s been through my much-revised manuscript and has made extensive notes and suggestions. Before he can proceed with submitting the book, I need to check over everything and see what I think. That’s the task I’m drawn toward with all the fervor of my writerly being, but there’s this matter of 36 writing students depending on me to return their essays on Wednesday. . . . One of my definitions of Heaven is “the place where day jobs will never again keep us from our writing.” Writing will be the “day job” — at least, for those of us who love to write.

Anyway, this book I finished reading was Lost Lands, Forgotten Realms: Sunken Continents, Vanished Cities, and the Kingdoms that History Misplaced, by Bob Curran. It’s published by New Page Books, a division of Career Press, Franklin Lakes, NJ, 2007.

Aside from the fact that it’s simply great fun to read about these places we’ve often heard of (but may not know many details about), what I like most about the book is that it’s a fountain of story ideas for a fantasy writer. Here are discussions of such places as El Dorado, The Kingdom of Prince Madoc, Hyperborea, The Hollow Hills, and The Lost Dutchman Mine [This list is not inclusive, by any means!], and every one of them is a fantastic springboard into Story, suggesting romance, drama, and high adventure against a fascinating backdrop. These places whisper and sing with the allure that has always beckoned our kind.

Have you wondered what is the exact difference between Avalon and Lyonesse? Have you been intrigued by tantalizing references to Hy-Brasil? Have your ears perked up at the mention of Prester John, Judaculla, Shangri-La, Davy Jones and his watery locker, Yggdrasil, or the Green Children? There’s even material here to fascinate the Lovecraftian, in the section on Irem: City of Pillars, which yes, does figure into much of Lovecraft’s work.

I’ll quote here from my reading log, the record I keep of books I’ve finished:

I started reading it at 1:07 p.m. on Saturday, March 22, 2008 at my desk . . . ; I finished it at 1:10 a.m. on Friday, January 15, 2010 at the table. . . .

I read this book almost exclusively during lunches, usually on Mondays, at my desk. It was a huge amount of fun and offers a wealth of story ideas just begging to be developed!

I hope to get back here with another post sometime this week. In the meantime, has anyone else out there read a good book lately?

Crow Apocalypse

Posted on January 8, 2010 by fsdthreshold

I’m back. I guess I took a little Christmas/New Year sabbatical from blogging there, and I think it’s been restful. [True story: when I was a kid, for awhile I thought the word “sabbatical” meant the wild, unholy rituals that witches have at midnight in desolate places. So when I’d hear this or that person was “on sabbatical” or “took a sabbatical,” I would think, “Ooh–I thought s/he was Christian” and “Is that something you can declare in public?!”] I’m actually eager to be back on the blogging scene.

First, before I forget, I want to put in a plug here for my friend John R. Fultz. I’ve read some of his stories and know he is an excellent writer of speculative fiction, and he’s a great and gracious moderator of panel discussions. [See the interview with him in a previous entry on this blog.] He has a new dark fantasy comic called SKULLS up on Black Gate‘s website:

http://www.blackgate.com

SKULLS, I’m told, will be updated weekly–every Wednesday–so let’s all check it out! John, is there any recent news on the release of your graphic novel Primordia? I, for one, am “waiting with my neck stretched out,” as the Japanese expression goes.

So, you ask, what have I been up to? During my Christmas holidays, mainly I’ve been working hard on the revisions of my book The Sacred Woods. I was blessed to have some excellent feedback from test readers and from my dedicated and outstanding agent Eddie. So I made myself a master list of changes I wanted to make, and I’ve been working through that list, crossing off things with great satisfaction when I get them taken care of. I think I am just a day or two away from being able to send the manuscript back to Eddie, and I hope he’ll agree that it’s ready to start submitting. It is absolutely true what they say in all the workshops and writing trade magazines: nothing comes out perfect the first time. Leave it for a few months, get some feedback from readers, and your book or story can be improved in dozens of ways. What I’ve been producing these days on The Sacred Woods is very much like the Extended Editions of The Lord of the Rings movies. All the good things that were there to begin with, plus some extra, enriching material. I hope these revisions are making the difference between “pretty darn good” and “out of the park home run.” Heh, heh. It’s my blog, so I’m allowed to have delusions of grandeur here.

This past week also marked the passing of a very dear friend:

Dave (white) and Uni (brown-and-black)

Dave the cat passed away on January 5th. Although he officially belonged to some close friends of mine, we all agreed that he was essentially my cat. He and I were closer than he and his owners were. Because I was on Christmas break, I was able to spend his last few days with him almost constantly. I camped out on the floor next to him, did my revision work at a nearby table, and I was right beside him when he finally passed from this life. He was a truly good cat.

Dave and Uni

Dave and Uni

Anyway, here’s a report on something amazing I saw on December 14th.

It was a Monday morning, and the forecast was for inclement weather (the default of Niigata — I’ve often said that if I were going to write a memoir of Niigata life, the title would be Inclement). So instead of riding my bicycle to the university, I set out walking to the bus, about a 25-minute walk from my apartment. The jet black of a winter night was slowly paling as I locked my door and tramped toward the river. As I crossed Chitose Great Bridge, the sun peered over the horizon behind me. The sky there burst into red flame. (“Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.”) Ahead of me, the sky was dark gray and ominous.

As I crossed over the Shinano River and left the bridge, I froze in my tracks. Above the first main intersection, the power lines were packed with huge black crows, shoulder-to-shoulder, wing-to-wing. I turned my head to right and left. This is no exaggeration: as far as I could see to both sides, about a kilometer in each direction, the rows of crows were unbroken. I was stunned. This was no mere flock of crows: this was more crows than I’d ever seen in my life, all here at once, wing-to-wing on these power lines above me. They cried out in waves of sound that rolled along that vast length, a cold RRAWWK that passed from bird to bird in the way that thunder resounds along the horizon.

I stood on tiptoe and craned my neck, trying to see the end of them, but there was no end: to my left, they stretched to Daiichi High School and beyond. To my right, they seemed to go all the way to City Hall. I paused for a long while gazing up into those glittering black eyes, listening to the rolling waves of their unmusical cries.

When I ducked beneath them and continued on my way, I halted in my tracks again. It wasn’t just one set of power lines. A block later, the next set was equally laden with crows. Again, they stretched from horizon to horizon, with no more than an inch or two between the glistening black bodies. Some wheeled in flight, looking for open places on which to alight.

My gaze jumped ahead. A third set of power lines was thick with crows. And a fourth. I kid you not, the thought that came to my mind was: Is this it? Is this the day it all ends? Does the Lord come back in the clouds? It really and truly looked like something from a movie, something that would be accomplished with CGI imaging. If I weren’t seeing it with my own eyes, I would have thought it looked fake.

And here’s a bizarre detail: on each set of poles, there were six lines, but the crows invariably chose to congregate on just three of them. Three occupied, three unoccupied. I have no idea what that meant.

Since it’s now January 9th, obviously the world didn’t end. But if you were wondering where all the crows in your neighborhood were in mid-December, I think they were at CrowCon in Niigata. I wonder if the con featured a panel discussion on the role of humans in history and literature. Perhaps the panelists debated the issue of whether humans are sometime-allies of crows, or whether they’re simply the ambulatory, unripe stage of delectable carrion.

Quoth the human: “Nevermore!”

Lest this post end on a dark note, here’s another historical photo courtesy of our friend Chris:

Oh, dear. I must have been in about 6th grade. My acne is beginning to blossom. I'm wearing the World's Best Sweater Ever. Mom looks like a startled forest animal. (This is a very unflattering picture of her.) Dad looks disgruntled.

I’m back, and the fun never stops. See you again soon!

The Memory of Trees

Posted on December 19, 2009 by fsdthreshold

Yes, I stole that title from an Enya song. It’s on her album The Best of Enya, which is great, but my favorite CD of hers is still The Celts. Anyway, it makes an appropriate title for this post.

I’ve heard many of my fellow Lutherans claim that Dr. Martin Luther invented the Christmas tree. That would seem a difficult assertion to “prove,” as I suspect the practice of dragging green, branchy things indoors to use as decorations and/or symbols has been around since we had an “indoors.” But what is probably true is that Dr. Luther popularized the custom of bringing in an evergreen tree and tying lit candles to the branches, thus delighting every child and worrying every adult who saw it.

When everybody started doing it, Dr. Luther had to go into hiding in the Wartburg (a big, drafty castle well-stocked with pens, ink, and paper), where he wasn’t allowed to play with hatchets, saws, or matches, and where he settled down at last and translated the Bible into a vernacular that clued the common people in to what those priests were going on about in Latin, and to what those stories encoded in the stained-glass windows were all about.

So all was well that ended well: Germany didn’t burn down in the late Middle Ages, and Luther’s writings survived, and so did the custom of Christmas trees.

Dr. Luther wasn’t really bent on deforesting the countryside. His focus was on how, since evergreen trees maintain their life in a barren, wintry land (until you hew them down, of course), they make good symbols for Christian truth: that in Christ, God sent a Savior into the world; that through faith in Christ, even though we must pass once through the gate of mortality, we can have eternal life. (Hmm . . . I guess hewing down the tree once is part of the symbolism, after all!) At the top of the tree is the Christmas star, which leads the way to Bethlehem.

That star has always been one of my favorite parts of the Christmas accounts. Think of the wonder of it: an event so significant that it was marked by the appearance of a new star in the sky . . . a celestial light that moved ahead of the wise men, and stopped above the house where the child was. I don’t know whether the wise men simply headed in the direction of a distant star to the west of them, or whether it was a close and large enough light source that they physically followed it and saw it stop and hover above a particular house. The point is, it was something that had never happened before; they recognized its significance, and it led them to what they were seeking.

I love the fact that those called to Bethlehem, those afforded a glimpse of the newborn King, were the truly humble and the truly wise. Shepherds — the bluest of blue-collar workers, the simplest of folk who “knew nothing” and “had nothing,” responding to a host of angels . . . and then the far-off scholars with no other agenda — the pure scientists, with their noses in books and their eyes on the sky, earnestly poring over the sum of previous knowledge and watching the world to see what happened.

Isn’t it interesting that the paths of shepherds and scholars converged on the same house, the “House of Bread”? We who know nothing, and simply labor to survive . . . we who know what can be known . . . we are all beggars.

The one who feared and hated the star and what it meant was King Herod, who if he’d been king during the Second Age of Middle-earth, would almost certainly have become one of the ring-wraiths — the nine kings of Men who, “above all else, desire power.”

But anyway, back to the point!

(Sorry, one more quick story first, speaking of Luther: years ago in Taylorville, I knew a very old Pentecostal lady, who for a long time had lived across the street from my Grandma Emma. One day I happened to tell the lady, “We’re doing a play at our church. I’m playing the part of Dr. Martin Luther!” She blinked a few times and said, “You’re going to play a black man?”)

Now to the point! I was intending to talk here about memories of Christmas trees. (This may spark some good discussion — but whatever you do, keep those candles away from the curtains!)

First, one of my earliest memories of a Christmas tree is a memory of fear. (Why are so many of the things I love rooted in abject horror? Hmm. . . . Hallowe’en, Christmas, Easter, the Fourth of July, books, pens, office supplies — the fear is there, if only one looks for it.) It was in some department store. In my dim recollection, rounded and polished by the sands of time, I was temporarily separated from my mom, but that’s probably an embellishment — maybe she was looking in another direction or something. Anyway, I found myself “alone” with a towering Christmas tree all of white plastic — glaring white plastic branches, white needles — it was more like a thing of dead coral than a tree — or like some huge formation of frost. And smack in the center of the tree was a face: bulging eyes, maybe a nose, and for sure, a red, red mouth. It was like a clown’s mouth [shudder!] — thick-lipped and pliable. The mouth twisted and moved, and the eyes moved, and a voice (probably tape-recorded) emanated from inside the tree. I screamed and ran back to my mom. Even now, I shiver to recall the redness of that mouth in the midst of the pristine white tree . . . the staring eyes . . . the voice, laughing and beckoning me closer. . . . That tree put the fear of Christmas into me, for sure.

Whew! On to happier memories: Grandma Emma had a tree that everyone laughed at, everyone agreed was pretty pathetic, but we all loved it. My Uncle Art said it best: it looked like Charlie Brown’s scraggly little Christmas tree.

First of all, it was kept in an unused front bedroom, the newest part of the house, that was separate from the rest. Grandma kept the registers in that room closed and rugs tucked under the door, so that no heat was wasted on an unoccupied room. That room always scared me — fear again — partly because of the fierce coldness of it, partly because it had a big bed that was always made, with sheets and blankets and covers and pillows, but never used — a room eternally waiting for someone. But mostly it was scary because of the three-paned mirror on the dresser. Boy, did that mirror terrify me! When I’d venture into that room, the icy cold taking hold of me, I could see three images of myself at once, each from a slightly different angle, and I’d hear myself think “Three Freddys,” which phrase somehow scared me even more.

The little tree was kept in a white cardboard box in a big closet at the very extremity of that room. I think it was my Uncle Art who described the annual tree-getting ritual as “going to the Cold Clothes Closet to Get the Creepy Christmas Tree.”

Back in the warmth of the main house, the tree seemed normal-sized to me as a small child, but I think it must have only been about as big as a bush. But Grandma had it up on a little table, so it was tall enough. It was green and shaggy, with needles sort of like green fur. I’m sure whoever designed it was proud of him/herself for the innovation of convenience: you didn’t have to assemble anything. The branches were attached to the trunk and folded up against it. When you took it out of its box, you just had to pull each branch down to the angle you wanted, and twist them a little into the shapes you wanted. I suppose this had been done so many times that they were all bent and crooked and tired. There were certain areas on the tree where there were too few branches, no matter how you rearranged them. You could spend all the time you wanted, but the tree always came out looking like a green, lopsided tumbleweed. And the biggie: it could never, ever stand up by  itself. We always had to tie strings to it like guy wires. One ran from the trunk to the window-latch. One ran to a bookcase. There were at least three strings, so now it was like a green tumbleweed caught in a web. And you didn’t want to get too rambunctious around it, because it was all very precarious.

Then Grandma would open the boxes of decorations and lights. As I look back, I think she probably had lights on there that were designed for all-weather outdoor use. They seriously overburdened that tree — and probably the wiring of the house. Now and then a bulb would explode with a pop and a sizzle, and we’d usually blow a fuse before the day was done. But out of the boxes came ornaments like treasures — delicate bulbs and figurines of glass — angels and wise men, spikes, snowmen, and colorful Father Christmases that were far older than Santa Claus — definitely old-world, with their fur-lined robes of blue and gold and green. The most wondrous of these ornaments were from Germany: I’m not clear on whether Mom brought them back when she was there, or whether my great-grandparents had brought them over on the boat. (I’m guessing Mom.) To set on the piano were straw-basket figurines of Saint Nicholas and his diabolic counterpart, the long-tongued, red-skinned Krampus, who accompanied St. Nick and left lumps of coal in the stockings of children who Hadn’t Been Good.

In all its finery, tinsel and lights and several lifetimes’ accumulation of ornaments — decorated over several hours by Grandma and me — the tree was no longer pathetic. Well, it was, but it wasn’t. It was like us, like the shepherds, like the wise men — beggars from the dark depths of the Cold Clothes Closet, now Clothed in Christ. It became the center of many a loving, joyous Christmas celebration. For my cousins and me, I’m sure that will always be The tree — the one Christmas tree that stands out in our memories as having been the most magical.

Oh, there were good ones at our house, too. I remember plenty of three different kinds of tree options. We had an artificial one, too, that came up from the basement in a box. It was also green, and the branches for it had little splashes of different-colored paint at their bases which corresponded to little splashes of paint on the trunk. So, for example, brown-coded branches were the longest, followed by black, etc. There was always a dead, mummified mouse somewhere in the box — invariably. I don’t remember a time when we opened that box that there wasn’t exactly one dead mouse included. (It wasn’t the same mouse; we removed it each time.) I suppose the mice in our house had a council each summer to choose the volunteer from among their sick and elderly.

But then, we also had quite a few real trees, selected from Christmas tree sales lots run by the Boy Scouts.

And then later in my childhood, my parents discovered the best option of all: getting a live, potted tree which could be planted outdoors after the holidays. We did this for enough years that there’s now an evergreen hedgerow along one edge of the yard.

Our trees, too, had lots of colored lights of different sizes that popped and smelled hot and blew fuses; and we also had some of the German ornaments. What I remember most about our trees was that I loved to crawl into the space behind them, hidden between the tree, the wall, and the bookcase, as if I were hidden in a real forest, and I would gaze into the glowing caverns among the branches. Those spaces, viewed up close, became magical worlds, illuminated by the winking lights and the glinting bulbs, angels, and tin soldiers. The worlds were green and aromatic, populated by fairies, saints, living snowmen. . . .

I remember, too, times when we’d turn off all the lights except those on the Christmas tree, and we’d admire it for a long while, that radiant tree in the warm, dark hush of the house.

Finally, there was the great tree in the chapel at Concordia College. As a chapel assistant, I always got in on helping to put it up, on an evening at the start of Advent. I think the call was open to the entire campus — anyone interested could come and help set it up, and it was a major task. The tree was about 20 feet tall in my memory (which probably means it was about 15), and its trunk came in two sections which fit together none too snugly — there was some wobble and play, which again made the operation precarious.

It also had branches which fit into holes. Consider the physics of such a tree: branches at the top of an evergreen are shorter, right? And you can’t assemble such a tree if it’s lying down, because one side would come out squashed. And if you start putting in branches at the bottom, you can’t get a ladder close enough to put in the ones at the top. So the only way to do it is to stand up the entire trunk, get it firmly fixed in the holder, and then start putting in branches from the top down.

I remember one year in particular — probably the first year I helped with it, because Pastor Tom Acton was still there as campus pastor. A dozen or so of us were helping — organizing branches into piles, untangling light strings, etc. Pastor Acton didn’t like heights, and I loved them, so he let me be the ladder man. (In Japan, there’s an old saying: “Monkeys and fools like high places.”) We’d stick in branches as the trunk wobbled dangerously, bending in the middle. People were sent to the back of the chapel to assess the overall shape, to tell us where the holes were. I remember the tree toppling over when we had it about half done, and one side got squashed flat, and we had to take most of the branches out and start over.

And while we could still get the ladder in close, before the bigger branches were in, we also had to start stringing on the tiny white lights. From the very top of the ladder, I still couldn’t reach the top of the tree to hang the lights, until Pastor Acton came up with a solution: “Bring him a taper,” he said. (A taper is that instrument acolytes use for lighting candles. It has a wooden handle, and the brass top of it forks like a capital upsilon: one branch has a cup for extinguishing candles, and the other has a thin candle housed in a tube — the candle can be paid out like a pencil lead as it burns down, and it’s used for lighting other candles. Anyway, it also works well for lifting a string of Christmas lights to tree branches over one’s head.)

The morning after we set up that enormous, hardly-stable tree, the college president was scheduled to give the homily in chapel, and when he wasn’t in the pulpit, he was sitting right at the base of the trunk; every so often he’d brush against one of the branches. All we who’d been there to help erect it kept eyeing the tree nervously, watching the subtle quivering of its needles, wondering if President Krentz were about to be buried under a ton of artificial greenery. (His guardian angels were on duty, and he lived to serve out his entire presidency in good health.)

And those are my memories of Christmas trees. Do you have any good Christmas tree stories to tell? Were there trees that horrified or delighted you? Trees that were particularly problematic or particularly wonderful? What are your memories of trees?

If I don’t get another chance to say it before the 25th: to all of you, a very merry and blessed Christmas!