Ars Longa, Vita Brevis

Chauvet Horses, 30,000 years old

 

An individual human life can range from moments to a century.  Yet even a century is a heartbeat when the entire span of human history is imagined.  I am reading a book on the Siege of Malta and the Battle of Lepanto, two events that spanned decades, but in hindsight can be analyzed and discussed in an evening.  It made me think about the complexity of existence and how limited a single lifetime can be, even one that is long and filled with adventure.  It still can represent only a fraction of what is possible, or what has been.

If we imagine that every human life is a book, and that each book is kept in a library, then the magnitude of human experience can be visualized.  This library is too big to explore.  Even condensed into a single volume titled “The History of Civilization” would be too limited.  An individual could not read all those books in his or her lifetime.  In order to get a full understanding of what it means to be human, there must be Art.

Art is a form of communication that can condense human experience into a flash of comprehension and even “experience”.  This is the big “Art” that includes music and dance and architecture and all forms of human expression.  Without these elements of culture, each human life would just be a brief replay of eating and sleeping.

When you look at art (or listen) your brain is encouraged to Grok Fully a message from one mind to another.  Time becomes meaningless.  The images of the horses in the Chauvet cave speak to us now.  The spoken language of the artist is as dead as he is, yet this language of beauty and truth will never disapear.  30,000 years is nothing.  And everything.  It is now.  You can see it.  Now.

Concepts can be communicated as well.  Here is something remarkable that needs no words in any language to communicate in mere moments the entire history of human war:

Picasso 1937 Guernica

This is not just one war, but all wars.

And this is not just one man, but the idea of man:

Michaelangelo's David

And woman

Da Vinci's Mona Lisa

And music.  Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is an audible representation of being human.  In one short hour you can be infused with every human emotion there is.  You want to know what sadness sounds like?  Joy? Love?  Tenderness? Hatred and anger? For $1.29 you can listen to centuries of collected human emotion on your portable listening device.  What does Hope look like?  Fear?  Love? Museums are filled with sculpture that will show you.  Here is something we all can understand:

Rodin "The Kiss"

And this is a tomb.  We can understand in one eyeblink the brief breath of one woman’s life and the eternity of this monument and see the love of a man for his wife:

And not to forget film and theatre and literature too.  Can’t forget fiction!  Exploring what being fully human means has been a common theme since The Metamorphoses of Apuleius.

Why are we here?  What does it all mean? We want to know.  We have to know.

A life without Art is a life lived alone.

 

Bladerunner. "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

Art is forever.  Life is brief.

Patience and Perseverence

My son asked me today, “How do you teach patience and perseverence?”   Apparently he knew someone who needed to learn and my son wanted to teach them.

I said, “Those qualities cannot be taught.”

So then he asked, “Then how did I learn them?”

Mind you, he is 22 years old, and I thought of the witty retort: “it takes time and effort to teach patience and perseverence”, but the truth is that he had learned these things by the time he was he was 5.   I tried to remember teaching my children.  I realized that what I taught them were the attributes that are required before patience and perseverence can be developed.  Then they developed those skills by themselves.  I was raised in a military family, so I learned early on never to shirk responsibility or shift blame.  Those were shameful behaviors that my parents snuffed out pretty darn quick.

My kids were taught that they are responsible for what happens to them.  This cause-and-effect lesson can be painful, but is necessary.  When they fell down or hurt themselves my first reaction was to say, “Slow down and watch where you are going.”  They put their own band-aids on.  When they were sick they were put to bed with juice and told to sleep.  There was absolutely no coddling.  Nowadays this would be considered child abuse by parents who think their children need to be worshipped as gods.  I am thinking now of parents whose children see a doctor when their noses run, or who call their teachers to complain when their child fails a test.

After some years of this training, my kids rarely sported skinned knees or colds lasting more than a day.  They never played illness or injury as if it were an advantage.  Even now when they are all adults they watch where they are going and go to bed uncomplaining with juice if they are sick.

Disappointments were handled the same way.  I never told them that the disapointment was caused by someone or some circumstance.  I always said, “Why didn’t you do X?” or “Why didn’t you try harder?” and  ”You will get it next time if you work at it.”

So by emphasizing that they were responsible for what happens to them, they learned patience and perseverence all by themselves.

I reminded my son of the opening 10 minutes of Kung Fu.  I told him that Caine came to the monastery as a child, not with a clean slate, but having already learned patience and perseverence.  The boys who were dismissed had not. Caine waited outside the gates for a week, then longer, then in the rain…and then the important clincher: “After you, honorable sir.”

I told him to show his friend that film and perhaps it might help.  Those who are extremely self-centered cannot think beyond their personal space.  They cannot be patient because they want what they want right now.  They cannot persevere because if they can’t get what they want, they abandon the goal or try to get someone else to get it for them.  And…they seem to be always whining.

How to teach them to release the ego?  How do you teach someone he or she is not the center of the universe?  Hard to do if they have been taught that they ARE since birth.

When there is so much to overcome, there is an “aha” moment when folks do ”get it”.  There is a moment like that in Kung Fu as well.  The child Caine asks the blind monk Po, “Old man, how is it that you hear these things?” and Po replies, “Young man…how is it that you do not?”

You can see the “aha” in Caine’s eyes.

I told my son to give the DVD to his friend and cross his fingers.

Sufi Whirling

The first part of third book in the series of the Elysium Texts, the Chaldean Codex, takes place in the mountains of Persia.  The adventurers meet up with Sufi dervishes in the mountains in their search for followers of Zarathustra and the remnants of the disbanded Assasssins.  In my research I have become fascinated with the dervishes and their hypnotic dance meditation.  Sadly, an authentic audience is unlikely for many reasons.  One can still see the tourist versions in Turkey, however, and I posted a short clip of one of those.

The Persian poet, Rumi, discovered this very zen way of communing with God in the 13th century.  The practice has ebbed and flowed over the years depending on the political situation.  Every culture has a shamanic mysticism preserved somewhere inside.  This one shares attributes with Tai Chi, Labyrinth-walking, chanting and even the modern Rave.  There is a disciplined ritual to the movements, each of which has a significance in the communion with god.  The costume as well.  Rumi’s esctatic poems reflect the insight and enlightenment he achieved by touching god in this manner.  He says,

Just like God you will rip and tear down

and at the same time sew and repair.

You will open and close

Both at the same time.

If you want you can appear and conceal yourself however you like.

You will see everyone everything bare and naked.

Yet no one can see you

In the land of soul

You will be sultan of sultans.

Wonderful things can happen when one goes ’round and ’round.

John Carter of Mars, Earth and Barsoom

Yummy

I went to see the John Carter movie this weekend.  I had read many of the Burroughs novels when I was 12 or so and had mostly forgotten them, so it was with only a small amount of nostaligia and a large amount of expectation that I went to see this.   I remember only that Dejah Thoris annoyed me when I was pre-pubescent and I am pleased that she has been brought up-to-date and displays a bit more independant kick-ass than the 1917 version. And you can see that John Carter has buffed up a bit over the Art Nouveau version (yummy yummy).

“Get behind me, Dejah, I’ll protect you!”

In the movie when he rescues her he says “Get behind me” but then she grabs a blade and does some bad-guy carving-up…so he looks at her, mouth agape then says, “or maybe I’ll get behind you.”  I couldn’t help but think of the cover.  I’m pretty sure the screenwriters were thinking of that too.

I am also pleased to report that they stuck pretty much to the original story and the changes they made enhanced the narrative rather than F’d it up.  Burroughs tells a great story.  Leave well enough alone.  The 19th century Earth adventures and the timeless Mars adventure were both beautifully done:  gorgeous costumes and backgrounds, super-awesome CGI and a great screenplay.  Music wasn’t memorable, but that is not why I go to the movies.

The spirit of the story comes through, the characters and the intent.  There is a scene where John has led the “good guys” to the wrong city and Tars smacks him upside the back of his head.  Priceless.  I loved that…the screenplay writers (there are three of them) knew exactly what to do to maintain the feel of the adventure, the companionship and deep connection of the cadre of friends as they try to save the city and the planet.  It was obvious they had respect for Burroughs.

I give this 5 stars because it is the most fun I’ve had at the movies in years.  I had so much fun that I had the wicked wicked thought as I came out of the theatre that I wanted to turn around and go back in and watch it again right away.  I mean, right away.  In fact, I’m thinking about doing that right now.

I am just so pleased that someone, somewhere, decided to spend 250 million dollars to make me happy for 2 hours.

Addendum:  After looking at some professional critics’ reviews I had to laugh.  Some said the film was “derivative”.  Wait…I’m still laughing, let me catch my breath.  OK.  This reminds me of one of those teacher pass-arounds where they share student essays.  A high-school student wrote on his test, “I don’t see what’s so great about Hamlet.  It’s just a bunch of cliches.”

I guess they just didn’t know that A Princess of Mars is one of the first interplanetary romances written in English and spawned an entire literary genre.  Star Wars is derivative.  Not this one.  *facepalm*

There's something about a man in chains...in a pit...on Mars

Cadfael

Derek Jacobi as Brother Cadfael

How can an old man and a monk be sexy?  We are talking about the two categories of men that are usually relegated to the opposite side of the word.  This was intriguing to me as I watched the 1994 Mystery series on Netflix.  Because everything I see or hear will eventually end up in a novel, I was curious to deconstruct the character to see what elements were involved that made Cadfael so appealing.

First, I will define sexy.  The simple definition would suggest that something sexy is  someone or something one would want to have sex with.  But inanimate objects are described as “sexy” all the time.  Most notably automobiles…The meaning of the word has achieved some creeping connotations with the success of the advertising industry.  For simplicity I will define “sexy” as “emotionally appealing”.  (That will cover automobiles as well.)

Cadfael is a Benedictine Brother, not a priest, in Shrewsbury (near Wales) in the 12th century and was created in the 1970′s by mystery novelist Ellis Peters. He is an herbalist and healer and finds himself solving murders in a time where justice had a very different meaning than it does today.  This is part of his appeal.

In his youth he was a soldier in the Crusades and was exposed to ideas and cultures of the Middle East when the vast majority of Englishmen rarely traveled ten miles from their place of birth in their entire lives.  This is another part: his great intelligence and worldly experience.

But how can he be so deliciously wonderful?  It is not just me, folks, so let’s get that out of the way.  The series of books was and is very popular and if you have seen the series you can see the enormous expense in filming the thirteen 90 minute episodes.  It is a gorgeous and historically rich production.

So, back to deconstruction.  First, his age.  He is older, yes, though still handsome in a Derek Jacobi way.  He is tall and has broad shoulders, so physically he is imposing and impressive.  Those attributes transcend youth and are always sexy.  He has a limp…he was badly wounded in the Crusades, so this lends an air of vulnerability as well as valor to his character.  Also appealing.

He has retired to peace and quiet, which in the 12th century means a monastery.  He had enough adventure in his youth.  He is not a priest, but has taken vows of obedience and chastity.  This makes him somewhat righteous…and I am thinking of all the youthful “bad boy” motorcycle and vampire characters that are so appealing to young women.  Why? Because bad boys defy authority and act against the social norm. They are courageous in their naughtiness.  Those boys reflect tendencies that are the opposite of a righteous monk.  Cadfael should be boring, un-sexy and dull.  But he is not.

Because Cadfael is a Bad Boy.

Yes.  That is why he is sexy.  Cadfael brings to the stories of murder and mayhem the naughtiness of compassion and intelligence that was sorely lacking in Medieval times.  He insists on finding the truth, wants justice for the dead and the wronged, and will defy the local authority figures to get it.  He does it by outsmarting them.  That is what is appealing to me.  He does not rush in with a sword and kill all the bad guys.  You do not see him walking towards you in slow motion as behind him thatched cottages erupt in righteous and vengeful flames…he outsmarts them…he outsmarts them.

Delicious.

And he lets a confessed murderer go free (In the episode, The Leper of St Giles).  He has a much much deeper understanding of justice than we see today, or for all time.  His compassion is the true compassion of his God, and though the Medieval Church is focused on penitence and punishment, Cadfael (who fought for those ideas in a bloody and senseless Crusade) has transcended those limited beliefs and out-Christians the Christians.  This is delicious too.

And his vows?  The conflict between his great love and compassion for humanity and the necessary renunciation of any kind of physical human contact is painfully evident in the novels and the script.  This aspect makes you want to give him a hug, because he needs a hug many times (he is haunted by the horrors of battle and the loss of his true love)…and yet hugs are not possible.  He flinches from even a touch.  So we have this chasm of compassion for him as well.

Cadfael exists beyond touch, in the pages of a novel and in the light of a screen.  But he touches our hearts.

Cadfael and Beringar discussing murder most foul

Thank you, Ellis Peters.

Forever Hamlet

my lord Hamlet, and all of us

I saw Hamlet for the first time and for the fiftieth last night.  I had not seen David Tennant’s ’09 production until now.  He is certainly the most soulful Hamlet I have seen.  His portrayal was also the most vulnerable as he is so thin and his eyes so big.  He makes the scene with Gertrude more believable that he is her little boy, lost.

As excellent as Branagh was in that scene, he was too swaggering to be vulnerable.  And Tennant’s madness was much more of an antic disposition than any I’ve seen.

He was wonderful, and as I am an experienced Hamlet-watcher, I was waiting to see if the director was going to suggest that Hamlet was really cracking up, or if he was truly faking it.   He is faking it in this one.

Tennant’s scenes with Ophelia were not as touching as Branagh’s, nor his “Forty-thousand brothers” line, a line that can give chills if delivered right.  The director seemed to relegate Ophelia to her signature herb-strewing and not much else.  One cannot believe the grave scene if the relationship with Ophelia is not seeded tenderly throughout the first half of the play.  Tennant’s 40,000 brothers was not believable and I grieve for that.

We have to see that he does love her

The Osric scene, which precedes one of my favorite moments in Hamlet, was weak as well.  It was perfect with Branagh and Williams:

the trappings of society vs real human relationships

Here Osric is puffed up with the most superficial of all human characters: the courtier.  Hamlet, line by line, contrasts the buffoon with everything he has learned about the human experience on earth in the first 4 acts.  This scene leads into the most important lines of the play (IMHO): “If it be now, ’tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.”  Then he says, “Let it be.”

He had asked himself, “To be or not to be?” earlier.  Here is his answer to himself…with the slow…let…it…be…

Hamlet has not been “ready” until that moment.  I don’t like to see the director just skip by those lines.  I have to sniff and rub my cheek every time Branagh delivers them, but Tennant pops them out too fast and the look in his eye suggests he is ready for the dual…not ready for death as Branagh is.  Horatio knows this.  In the Branagh version Horatio bursts into tears at that line.  In Tennant’s we go right to the fencing.

However…Tennant’s Soliloquies were awesome.  It is those eyes…he does angst like no other.

yes...

I love Hamlet and Hamlet.

When I was a teenager I used to cry and cry when I was reading Hamlet and got to the end.  I had a ritual where I would turn back the pages and would not put the book down until I had read Act 1 again…so that Hamlet was alive again as I closed the book.  I had fantasies where I was Ophelia and I saved him.  We would run away together to a ship and leave Denmark forever…but try as I might in these imaginary adventures, I could not take away what plagued the Prince.  There is no saving Hamlet.  It defeats the purpose of the play.

Hamlet, and by Hamlet, I mean the most beautified Bard, teaches us all what it is we are here for in the first place:  What a piece of work is a man.

Hamlet must die, as we all must.  The readiness is all.

And yet he is forever.  We can turn back the pages and be Hamlet all over again, whenever we want.

Wind and Wave

16 and a half feet long...and two feet from the deep blue sea

In writing conferences we are often admonished to “write what you know” and this came home to me recently as I edited the manuscript for Necromancer.  I have written a sea battle for the novel and then another one for the Free Short Story that is offered on the publisher’s website prior to the release of each novel.  Sea battles will figure prominently in the third book, the Chaldean Codex.  But really, have I been in sea battle?

Well, yes.  Sort of.

Perhaps not in a 15th century galleon (though I have stood on the deck of a tall ship in the harbor at San Diego, but that is another story) but I have battled the wind and the waves.  When I was 16 years old I had a magnificent boyfriend who was just a bit older than me.  He and I met on a school bus when our fathers were stationed on the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida.  His dad was a sea captain and mine was a flight instructor.  Between the two of us we encompassed the purpose of a Naval Air Station.

He was no novice at sea, his dad owned a cruiser and he had been sailing for years.  Our first date was on the water.  But this adventure occurred at least a year later, after I had become skilled as a deck hand.  I could hold my own on the little boats, the Sunfish and Lasers, and knew how to follow orders on the larger ones.  I could set and pack a spinnaker…a great triumph for me.  But on this day we were in a little O’Day, a sixteen foot wooden day sailer practicing for a regatta he was going to race the next weekend.

After school we met at the marina and checked out the little boat.  We planned to practice along the Intercoastal Waterway because he wanted to cruise along the regatta’s route.  He was at the rudder and I was on the sails.  It all started out sunny and warm and cheerful, as most adventures do.  I was telling him a story I heard from my father about the Intercoastal this week.  Dad was telling us at dinner how in one of the training exercises the pilots must complete is a parachute drop.  The men are in their flight suits and dropped into the water with chutes open and then dragged by a boat through the waves.  The idea is to train them to untangle themselves and inflate their vests for a sea rescue in the event that they had bailed from a damaged plane into the water.

This week the Navy suspended that training temporarily.  On their first run that week, as they were dragging the pilots through the water, fins began to appear behind them.  The Navy was trolling for sharks, using their expensive pilots as bait.  We laughed about this, but it wasn’t funny about an hour later.

The Intercoastal is like a huge canal between the mainland and outrigger islands used by freighters for shipping.  There are periodic openings in the islands to allow passage to the Gulf of Mexico, and there is healthy traffic on this waterway.  It is like an interstate highway for shipping.  Our little O’Day seemed big enough in the water around the marina, and comfortable in Pensacola Bay.  It was like a toy boat in the Intercoastal.  We had to sail around the great aircraft carrier, Lexington.  I looked up and up and up. It was like a mountain.  And the freighters are nothing to sneeze at either.  I suppose it is like riding a bike between big rigs on the interstate…

But we practiced tacking back and forth and zooming through the waves as the wind picked up as it always did around 4 o’clock every afternoon.  Florida weather is fairly predictable.  But then the sky darkened and it looked like  a thunderstorm was brewing.  Not unusual at all.  We looked at the sky , then looked back toward the marina, gauging distance and time.  Uh oh.  We were farther away from home than we realized, and the way back was toward the storm and upwind…and the Intercoastal is long and narrow, which means a lot of back and forth against the wind.  Very slow and we have to cross the shipping lanes with each tack.

We came about and started the hard work.  We made good time in the freshening wind, but as we approached the final turn around where the Lexington was moored, the sea had begun to come in through the channel.  We never paid much attention to the tide because we usually sailed in the bay where it had a negligible influence on the water (except for one time when we went aground in a larger boat, but that is another adventure).  I remember looking at him.  I had not been afraid this whole time.  My trust in him was absolute. He was amazing on any sailboat and could make them do anything he wanted.  He was their lord and master.  But when I saw what the incoming tide was doing to the channel, I turned to see what he thought about that.  I remember feeling that stab of real panic at the moment I saw his face.  He was frightened.  If he was frightened, then we were in real trouble.

The tide was pouring through a narrow opening between two islands, churning the water that flowed through the Intercoastal.  Huge waves were created by the surge of the water flowing in different directions with nowhere to go.  The bouys had begun to rock and their warning bells added to the sound of the wind in the rigging. These were not swells that you could sail up and over like a hill, but smashing waves from all four directions, like if you had a dishpan full of water and shook it hard. And the wind was picking up in irregular squalls from the approaching thunderstorm and all this angry Nature was between us and the marina.  And we were in this, suddenly, very very tiny boat.  Then I remembered the sharks.  I looked down at the foamy water sliding past the hull just a foot beneath me.  I think this was the first time in my whole life that I knew what real fear was.  I actually suggested we ground the boat and walk home, but he just gave me a disgusted look.

We both knew what had to be done, so there was no confusion or anything,  It was hard work and we were both concentrating with every brain cell…I remember an extreme heightened awareness of everything: wind, water, sky, lines, sails, balance.  The little boat was up and down like a bucking horse and it never stopped.  We were still sailing upwind, which meant a change in direction every two or three minutes.  I was actually looking up at the waves…very scary.  We went up up up then down down down then back and forth then up again.  Ocean splashed over the rails, we were both soaked and there was no time to bail the water that sloshed at our feet.  His arms strained constantly at the rudder, for he had to move it with each wave and the choppy water meant that the bow did not want to stay in one place, and pointing the bow was how we kept air in the sails so we could go forward.  I was watching the tell-tales to keep us from stalling, but even with our best effort the current would grab us and pull us backward even as the wind bounced us forward.  We were stationary off the landmark I was watching on shore.  When we tacked, he pushed the rudder so hard the rails were almost in the water, trying to get some kind of forward purchase.  I scrambled up the sides each time, ducked the boom and leaped to the other side over and over until my legs were rubber.  I figured we were dead.  The storm was closer, the sky was black and it was obvious we had just exceeded the  recommended Beaufort wind scale for this class of day sailer.  I thought about those sharks again. (If my parents are reading this, sorry Mom and Dad.  I never told you this story because I was afraid you would never let me out on the water again).

A big squall was visible ahead. You can see these bastards coming because they disturb the surface of the water in a way that is different from the straight winds.  In little boats (and big ones, too, I suppose) you are constantly scanning the water for them because they will capsize you before you can say, “ahoy” if you do not turn or set your sails for them before they get there.  He said, “fuck” and “bloody hell”.  I just wanted to pee myself.  He had me drop my lines and he turned the boat into the squall.  We let the sails flap and as we waited for it, we felt ourselves surge backward with the current, losing all the distance we had just killed ourselves for.   It didn’t just hit, but slammed.  I’d like to think I became one with the wind and the waves and the boat, but this was long before I read any zen.  I do remember the crescendo of fear and how it spread out all over me as I held on for dear life as the rails dipped into  the water then lifted to pitch and yaw.  The strange thing was how after the fear reached a peak it went away like the squall.  It was like it passed through me and I felt each stab like electricity, but then it was gone, and I was just tired.  We looked at each other, glad to be upright.  He nodded to the lines and I picked them up again and set the sails to catch the straight winds.  He leaned into the rudder and set the bow.  We were both silent the whole way back, as that little boat inched its way toward the marina.  We made it back just as the thunderstorm crashed all around us.  I loved my boyfriend so much as the little boat glided into the slip and I reached for the dock.

It was after dark when I got home.

The parents asked, “Did you have a good time?”

Peace.

.