Stones Beneath a White Star

 

Stones Beneath a White Star by Martin Locker
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was speaking with someone recently about teaching young children complex concepts. This friend is a teacher of very young children (three- to five-year olds) and is tasked with teaching them some advanced concepts. She was concerned that these kids were never going to remember these principles, though they might integrate them subconsciously, the same way that back in our secondary-school grade introduction to trigonometry and pre-calculus, we all said "we're never going to use this stuff". That turned out to be true for most of us, though our brains were permanently rewired, ever so slightly, to form thoughts in a new and different way than we had done before. All of this aside, we agreed that while these young kids probably won't remember a thing about what was said to them, they absolutely will remember the way they felt when they were being taught. I can attest to this. I remember my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Wells, not because of the things I learned, but because of her kindness and patience and her great sense of humor. I remember her reading us the Winnie the Pooh stories and her spot-on voices (with the Disney movies as her template). And I remember her encouraging my reading, even recommending me to what they called the "talented and gifted" readers program for reading and writing. I didn't even fully comprehend what that meant, but I remember the way she made me feel: special, recognized, an individual. I'll never forget her. I can't even name my second or fourth grade teachers, but Mrs. Wells; she was an icon.

I share this because of the way Martin's book Stones Beneath a White Star made me feel. If someone asked me what the book was "about," I would stumble and mumble my way through an answer. Something about friends and loss and mysticism and mountains and reconnecting with the past . . . mumble mumble mumble . . .

It's tough to pin it down. But I know how the book made me feel.

Excuse me while I get a little personal. I'm hardly on social media these days (intentionally), so I don't spill my guts like some people do regularly. So, humor me. I'll try not to be boring. And maybe this indulgence will say a bit about the book. One caveat: I am a pen pal with the author. We write each other, pen and paper, yes, the old-fashioned way, irregularly. As a result I've gotten to know Martin a little. I apologize if you think this shades the review in any way, but hey, it can't be helped now, can it?

What I didn't say about my experience with Mrs. Wells above is that I was living in Italy at the time. My dad was military - I was what is colloquially called a "Military Brat" (hey, if the shoe fits . . .) - so I lived in a lot of different places through my life. I sometimes wonder if Air's song "Universal Traveller" wasn't written for me (did I mention the word "brat"?). I've been around . . .

One problem with having been around is that some of the places I lived, I can never visit again. The Air Force base I was born at in Germany is now a US Army base, the base where we lived in Italy, San Vito, is abandoned and off-limits, the base in England where I spent most of high school is now a British spy base (though I can, and did go on a tour of some of the base a few years back, "my" house is strictly off-limits), and the house I lived in when we were in The Philippines was buried under volcanic ash and the base abandoned by the US military. In essence, a lot of my childhood stomping grounds are either inaccessible to me or just plain don't exist anymore, though I have written a bit about my dream-life in one of those places.

This makes me a little melancholy. While many people can just drive (or even walk) to their childhood home, I just can't. I can get bits and pieces and visit places near some of those places, but time and circumstance have effectively banished me from my own childhood. It's a little more than mere nostalgia. I am haunted by the ghosts of the places of my past.

And here we have a segue into why I feel the way I feel about this book. Stones Beneath a White Star is the most profound work of Psychogeography I have ever read. It is about the spirit of a place, in this case, the Pyrenees Mountains (where, incidentally, my ancestors on my father's side hail from, generally - though they lived in the Basque regions, while this work takes place largely in and around Andorra). The religio-mystical history of the region is dealt with in encyclopedic depth. The book as historical treatise on the area is exhaustive, thick with referents and nuances that I admittedly know little or nothing about. But this didn't affect my reading, outside of wanting to know more about the people, events, and places portrayed.

The real rub of the book is the intimate connection of a few close friends and fellow-believers to the land itself. Their connections to each other (and some of those who have passed on before them) provide the engine for the story (such as it is). These relationships, between people, the land, and the history of the land, is absolutely immersive. I cannot say what the book is "about," nor do I care. This is the kind of book you just live in, for the moment, a meditation on friendship, loss, and retrieval, of the fluctuating bonds of love despite the catastrophes and disappointments of living life on this planet. It is a novel about the resilience of friends finding peace in a broken world.

You can probably see where this is heading . . . I live in a world of broken memories, unretrievable. I'd like to think this isn't just a function of mawkish nostalgia. I literally can't go back. But the memories still haunt me. Needless to say, this book affected me . . . deeply.

Thank goodness that while much of my past is bricked off (or behind barbed wire), one thing persists, despite location, and that is meaningful friendships. I've made and lost many friends throughout the years (as I get older, I lose more and more), but as I retain some ties over the decades and form new friendships with people I've not known before, whether intentionally or through pure happenstance, there is connection. And this connection is something to be nurtured, something sacred.

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Des Lewis' Brainwright and My Writing

 Here, a very brief post, a mere link, really, to Des Lewis' Forrest Aguirre and the Brainwright for my old age. As some of you know, Des is a master of reviewing works of fiction in such a way as to re-present the work to new audiences by offering a detailed analysis that is less explanatory and more exploratory, not ingesting and regurgitating the material, but painting a picture of a painting with other eyes. His reviews are a kaleidoscope, zooming in and out, lensing, coloring, sometimes distorting to catch images out of the corner of the intellectual eye that one would otherwise miss. As I said, they re-present the work in fully self-sufficient strokes.

Now Des has examined his reviews through the lens of what I will call a Deep-Observational Engine, which takes the whole of his output (which has a vast and riddling complexity) and twists the kaleidoscope on the reviews themselves. For my own work, this is fascinating to me. I have no argument with the conclusions, but note that many of the threads presented here were not anything intentional on my part. Some were, of course, but some are just organic threads that emerge through my writing process from somewhere deep inside. When I read the review, it gives me reason to reflect not only on my work, but on myself. I think back to "where I was" in life at the time I wrote each of those stories, and I can see windows back into my own experience (the experience of living, not writing) two steps removed from my own biased analysis of myself. It's a refreshing view and lends perspective that I otherwise wouldn't have.

As always, Des: fantastic. You are a modern Wizard.

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Minori Leather bag and Mudita Kompakt phone

 I'm not usually one for product reviews, but every once in a while I find something that's just such high quality that I have to let people know (no, I'm not being paid or sponsored to say this or anything else in this review, for the record, but if you find this mildly entertaining or even useful and you'd like to contribute, see my kofi link below). I just bought two such items (well, I bought one of them months ago, but it's one of those "time will tell" things that I had to let play out): 1) the Boulder Leather Crossbody bag by Minori Leather, and 2) the Mudita Kompakt phone, both of which are pictured here:

Let's start with the bag, as that will be quickest. I absolutely LOVE this bag. It's perfect for travel, and I'll be using it on my Alaska cruise next week! Great size: fits my Boox Go 10.3, a composition book, and my Leuchtturm 411 writing book, as well as my passport and Mudita Kompakt phone (shown in the photo for reference size). This arrived QUICK (buying locally helps, folks). I love the weathered look and this looks to be bomb-proof. Solid construction, tight stitching, zippers are smooth. I'll probably have to leave it in my will for my kids. Strongly recommended. "It's just a bag," you say? Yeah, kiddo, wait until the apocalypse and we'll see who's begging for something to comfortably carry.

As for the Mudita Kompakt: I made the decision a long time ago to try to simplify my life and move toward a more analog existence. If you've read my blog, you've seen windows into that journey. And for my next trick, I'm (gasp!) ditching my smart phone. Well, at least I am after my Alaska trip because I need it for the boarding pass and such. But my everyday carry does NOT include my smartphone anymore. I could go on for days about the many ways that we are being manipulated by the builders of smartphones and those who create apps for them, and how we need to simplify our lives more and spend less time on social media and online in general, and being offline more lets us focus on things we love more (like, for me, writing and playing RPGs), but I really don't need to. Many, many people have done this before, mostly on youtube (ironically, if you watch youtube on your phone): here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. I'm sorry, you're welcome, and welcome to my rabbit hole.

So, the Mudita Kompakt does not run any google-fied apps. It can't. And I'm happy about that. It is a simple phone, with an e-ink screen (which minimizes that blue light that burns into your retinas at night from watching cat videos on your smart phone for too long - you know who you are) that is easy on the eyes and aesthetically pleasing. There are apps, but you can't access the App Store, which is fine by me. There's an alarm, calculator, calendar, camera (awkward to use and black and white through the viewfinder, though the pictures are taken in color), chess, E-reader, Maps, Meditation (really a glorified timer, if I'm being honest), Music (which needs some work. A lot of work, in fact), Notes (which also needs work - too few characters, to be sure), a recorder, and a weather app (fairly accurate). It's got some "warts" - music is just playable alphabetically or on shuffle, not by artist or album, but I'm confident they'll fix that in an update; maps has some latency issues because it's e-ink, but then the whole intent of the phone is to slow you down and make you think more intentionally, so it does that; the notes app definitely needs to allow more characters, and the screen is ultra sensitive, so I often find myself putting the phone into "Offline+" mode, which shuts off the phone, camera, microphones, and all wireless communications at the flick of a switch (psst: this is the phone privacy advocates have been looking for all along) and locking it. I had a lot of problems with pocket-dialing until I figured out I need to flip into Offline+ mode and lock my screen if I didn't want to inadvertently call someone. Like I said, it's ULTRA-sensitive and needs work, which I'm told they are doing.

Which brings me to another point: Mudita actually listens to their users. The proof is in the pudding. I've spent a fair amount of time on the Mudita forums and seen the complaints of users (myself included), and they have responded not just with patience and tact, but with updates that make sense. Yes, there is more work to do - I bought the phone on its kickstarter, so I knew there would be bugs - but I'm confident in Mudita's ability and willingness to address any shortcomings. However . . . if you think you're going to get a black and white smartphone, think again. That's not what this is about. This is about mental freedom from the grip of a smartphone. It's intended to keep you OFF the phone, to DISconnect and, thus, reconnect with yourself, your thoughts, your time, your surroundings, your hobbies, and your loved ones. Pretty revolutionary stuff.

My experience has been . . . good. At times, very difficult. I don't think I understood how strongly I was addicted to my smart phone (and still am until this trip is done) until I took the plunge. I have an addictive personality, so smartphones are built like a hook for suckers like me. So, if you can put down the smartphone and social media "anytime I want to" - this phone isn't really for you. But if you are looking to get more calm into your life, to avoid the jittery anxiety of the online world, and reclaim yourself and your time, give it a try. If you have any questions about the phone or my journey, I'd be glad to answer them.

And speaking of journeys, I'm about to take one! You'll probably see photos (taken by my Kompakt) in the not-too-distant future. Alrigh, packing my new bag for Alaska!

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Aurorae

 I've seen the Northern Lights a few times in my life, all of them since I moved to Wisconsin in 1996. The most spectacular displays I saw were back in the early-2000s. Unfortunately, phones didn't have cameras back then and digital cameras were expensive and finicky, so we never got pictures of those. But they were visible enough in the middle of Madison that we woke our kids up to come out and see them. I think we were home-schooling them at the time, so we could let them sleep in the next day. There were vivid blues, bright greens, and the occasional pink, and they fluctuated wildly across the sky. We could see all of this with the naked eye, they were so intense.

A few weeks ago, we caught a display, this time with our phones. Unlike the flashing display we saw back in the early aughts, these were difficult to see with the naked eye, but looking through our phone cameras, we were able to catch them. I'm including a couple of the better pictures below, along with a short video, for your viewing pleasure. It's worth staying up late and going out and seeing these displays (though we caught these right in our back yard). Enjoy.

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Greener Pastures

 

Greener Pastures by Michael Wehunt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The blurbs that introduce this collection are a who's-who of writers whose work I greatly appreciate: Gemma Files, Steve Rasnic Tem, Brian Evenson, Nathan Ballingrud, and S.P. Miskowski, among others. So, I had high expectations going into this lauded collection.

Unfortunately, things started slowly.

"Beside Me Singing in the Wilderness" takes the old tropes of vampirism and twists it up a bit. It's good, smoothly written, but not extraordinary to me. Your mileage may vary.

"Onanon" was more the sort of thing I expected from all the blurbs and praise I've read. Cosmic horror of the natural world told in a sparse, unforgiving voice.

And from here on out, the stories were incredibly strong, outside of one dip, which I'll mention below.

The title story is strong. Very strong. Like "could have been an episode of Rod Serling's original Twilight Zone" strong. It's the power of the unspoken and the unseen between the words that is so unsettling. The words only mark the boundaries. It's the gaps in-between where the horror dwells. I have a few friends who are truckers that I'm going to recommend this story to. Or maybe I shouldn't . . .

"A Discreet Music" is subtle and strange, but mostly not horrific. And this is good. I actually like the calm weirdness of this transformation, of the shedding of an old life for the new. It's not without its painful moments. On the contrary, there is deep pain in Hiram, the protagonist. And there are jarring revelations about the self, as well. But the metamorphosis is profound and moving.

"The Devil Under the Maison Blue" is such a gently-delivered story that one embraces the horror as, well, just fine. A horror story needn't be stark or harsh or jarring in any way to elicit a powerful response. This is a clear case in point. Sometimes it's the devil you don't know that makes the biggest impression.

I, too, am a sucker for lost footage stories. "October Film Haunt: Under the House" is a melange of the weird and the eerie, full of things that ought not to be, but are, and empty of things that should be, but are not. The lines between fact and fiction and between observer and observed are smeared beyond recognition, resulting in a kaleidoscope of horror that will haunt the reader for a very, long time. And if you're wondering what the cover art is all about: this is it!

"Deducted From Your Share in Paradise" defies expectations in every way. It's a story of maintaining innocence while in a maelstrom of selfish choices, about endings and new beginnings, and possibly about heaven and hell. But it's not so cut and dried as these pairings. One must worm their way between these things and question the very meaning of their outmost bounds. Or maybe, boundaries need to be ignored.

"The Inconsolable" presses deep on the depression button, then asks "what is faith?" and "what is comfort?" It's a poignant tale about breakups and new beginnings, along with the caveats inherent in leaving a piece of one's old life, and a piece of one's own soul, behind.

"Dancers," while weird, was just too soft-spoken for my tastes. It might even be an (gasp) "ineffective" story, trying too hard to be too many things at once. This was the one gap in this collection. I guess every collection has to have one.

"A Thousand Hundred Years" pushes even further through the boundaries of Mark Fisher's "Eerie" and "Weird", namely "that which should be there, but is missing" and "that which is there, but should not be," to great emotional effect. The story is a strange admixture of tears and fears, of melancholy and hope, a tale of being pulled in multiple directions, some good, some bad, all at once. It is life and loss in all its complexity, and reveals the true, confusing horrors of the world. Like many of the stories in this collection, this injects a great deal of emotion, without becoming sickly sweet or cynical, into a tale that squeezes the breath out of you.

Oof (again). "Bookends" is a poetic, sublime, beautiful gut punch. Grief is at the heart of it all, grief and loss, both of which I've experienced in bucketloads over the course of the last few years. Do not read this if you are dealing with an open emotional wound, specifically the death of a close loved one. This story will absolutely wreck you. Then again, it might just open some doors. Approach with caution.

The blurbs are deserved. Minus one miss, this collection hits on all cylinders. I will be reading more of Wehunt's work, for sure. But that's for the future, after I've recovered from this one and the deep emotional grooves it cut in me start to smooth out. For now, I am left scarred, but better for it. Kind of like . . . life.

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Get to Know Me! TTRPG Edition

 Okay, let's do this thing . . . This is as of December 2022. Things might change in the next . . . days? Weeks? Months? Anyway, here is a snapshot in time in relation to me and my relationship with TTRPGs;

1. It was a toy store in the lower level of Southroads Mall, Omaha (maybe Bellevue?) Nebraska. Can't even remember the name of it. My mom had bought me the AD&D PHB (1st edition, of course) for Christmas, 1979, and I bought the Holmes box set there, along with Dragon Magazine #33 in 1980. The first *gaming* store I bought something at was Aircraft Hobbies, Bellevue, NE, where I bought The Traveller Book in 1981. 

2. Probably the one I created in the mid-90s: Glamwell. It was a haberdash of Greyhawkian baseline, with a strong dose of Tekumel, and elements from Jorune. I still have all the notes. I even created my first website (now very defunct and no longer available) for that world. It was gaudy as heck and I loved it.

3. Lassiviren the Dark, from the AD&D Rogues Gallery, made a strong impression on me as a kid. In my adult years, at a gaming convention, I sat down to play an all-evil PC game with Alan Hammack as DM. I was the first one there and so he let me pick from the characters. I saw Lassiviren and said "Oh, heck yeah, that's who I want to play". He said "That's who I played in Gary's campaign". Good thing we were on the same level as the bathrooms because I nearly shat myself. I had completely forgotten that he, Al Hammack, had originally played Lassiviren. So I got to play the wily assassin for that game. Well, until I (or Lassiviren) was killed by a bouncing lightning bolt that our lead mage had stupidly cast in the inner chambers of an arch-devil. Way to go. Needless to say, we all died horrible deaths, but Lassiviren was the first to go. And I couldn't have been happier!

4. The first TTRPG I bought directly from the creator was Black Sun Deathcrawl by James MacGeorge. Now I game with James online on Saturday mornings and have been to a concert with him. Good times. 

5. I honestly don't know. It's a toss up between Gamma World 1st edition, AD&D 2e, Classic Traveller, DCCRPG, and Call of Cthulhu. I honestly don't know. 

6. Pheelanx Durrowphael: My entirely chaotic (and, to be honest, borderline chaotic evil by the time that campaign finally fizzled out after five years straight) 1/2 elf Magic User / Thief. He had a penchant for wild magic and just all around chaotic action. If it caused chaos, he was totally in the deep of it. As a result, he got caught up in the blood wars in a limited way, for instance, grabbing a fairly powerful devil (not and arch-devil, though) and dragging him (via teleport - but that's a different story) into the Abyss, to abandon him there once he had attracted the attention of several demons in the area. My DM took the idea of the Deck of Many Things and created a Wand of Many Things, which combined ten different tables of variations on the Deck of Many Things. He would use that wand a LOT, which got him in serious trouble a few times and got him out of serious trouble more than once. That many random results gave a lot of leeway for chaos, and Pheelanx loved every minute of it. It's a wonder he survived, but somehow, he did . . . barely. 

You'll note that some of his stats are preternaturally high. This is the result of using that Wand of Many Things so many times. I think he embraced chaos so much because, as a rule, he was very, VERY lucky!

7. As a rule, if I spend money on a TTRPG, I play it. Life's too short . . .

8. Favorite TTRPG for its art: Has to be Skyrealms of Jorune. Wow. Just wow. Incredible art. 

9. Favorite TTRPG for its writing: The Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Keeper Rulebook, Chapter 10: "Playing the Game". Everyone who runs any TTRPG of any system at all should read this chapter. I think I learned (and re-learned) more about running a game reading this than the previous, oh, 25 years or so of advice I had read before it. Yes, it's that good.

10. I have not yet played a journaling game, but I recently bought and reviewed Thousand Year Old Vampire, so I will be playing it, maybe this next year. 

11. I've played more hex crawls than I can number. But I prefer point crawls over hex crawls. 

12. I've designed many dungeons. I've published and sold a few of those dungeons. 

13. Outside of doing historical fencing with metal swords and daggers, no. But I have done rapier and dagger matches. Got kicked in the nuts the first time I did that and learned really quickly that historical fencing is not a sport, it's COMBAT!

14. See Wand of Many Things in section 6, above. Best. Magic. Item. Ever.

15. I played a really flirty thief character in the last Greyhawk campaign. He had . . . relationships. Um, yeah. 

16. Certain designer? Not really. I'm pretty loose and free with who designs what. If I like it and I think I can use it, I'll buy it. If not, I won't. 

17. I try to play a new TTRPG at every con I attend (usually I get to Garycon and Gameholecon each year). I'd like to play Vaesen in 2023. Tried to get in on a game in 2022, but they sold out quickly!

18. I'm going to answer the question I wanted to be asked here: What is the most memorable confrontation you've had with a villain in a TTRPG? The flirty thief I mentioned in section 15, above, Ryn was his name, was going through Return to the Tomb of Horrors. That is one tough mofo of a module, let me tell you! Anyway, we were squaring off with some Death Knights (yes, plural). We were getting pounded pretty good. Ryn had been saving a Potion of Gaseous Form for an outright emergency, and this was it. But rather than slink away while the rest of the party died, he made one last desperate attempt, a do-or-die proposition, to save the party. I asked the DM if gaseous form would allow me to enter a small hole, say 1/4" in diameter or so. He agreed, so Ryn, in gaseous form, snuck into the nostril of one of the Death Knights (who did not realize what was happening and failed his save and Magic Resistance rolls), then, once he had wiggled down to where the chest cavity was, shut off the effect of the potion. Ryn literally exploded the Death Knight from the inside out, essentially piercing the thing with his pair of magic daggers. The Death Knight was wearing platemail, so Ryn suffered substantial damage, but managed to hold on with just a couple of hit points left. And that was the end of the Death Knight. True story!

19. I don't know what this means. Yes, I have bled before. Sometimes profusely.

20. I was introduced to TTPRGs indirectly by one of my dad's friends named Bill Walters, in 1979. He actually gave me a copy of the Steve Jackson metagame "Rivets," which I became enamored with. Before he had a chance to get me to play a TTRPG, though, we moved from San Vito AFB, Brindisi, Italy (where Bill and my dad were stationed) to Sartell, Minnesota to live with my grandma while dad was getting cross-training. While in Minnesota, I discovered and bought the Official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Coloring Album. We then moved to Offutt AFB, Omaha, Nebraska. A few months later, Bill was reassigned to Offutt and, with my mother's permission, he whisked me off to play D&D with a bunch of people 2 - 3 X my age. And the rest is history. 

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The Robot Novels: The Caves of Steel / The Naked Sun

 

The Robot Novels: The Caves of Steel / The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It was probably around 1977 that I became fully aware that this specific edition of this novel had sat on my dad's bookshelf, probably since before I was born. It's strange to say, but that freakish cover with the vacuum-cleaner robot was a fixture in my house, as I said, likely from before I was born, to the day of my father's death in 2018. The stranger thing, I suppose, is that I have not read it until now. When my parents passed away (both within two months of each other - but that heartbreaking story is for another day), we got rid of most of their books. Many I had already read or owned, and most of the rest I wasn't terribly interested in. Dad had purged his collection back in the '90s or so, and, well, mom read romance novels almost exclusively, so . . .

But this one I kept. I can't look at the book without thinking about my dad. He was a huge fan of science fiction and of Isaac Asimov in particular. I gave some of the Foundation material a go some time ago, but wasn't floored by it. It was . . . good. But didn't strike me as amazing. But I had read many other books that my dad had (or had recommended to me) and he read some that I gave to him.

And what did my dad see in The Robot Novels? I can't tell you, but I can tell you what I saw.

First off, I'm convinced that Asimov wasn't really a science fiction author. At least not with this book. Sure, it's got all the trappings - robots (obviously), enclosed cities cut off from nature (the "Steel Caves" referred to in the first novel), spaceships, and blasters. But really, this is a noir novel along the lines of The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep.

Secondly, Asimov was a product of his time. The use of the term "boy" for robots, the undercurrent of sexism, etc. While these things are not as blatant as, say, Lovecraft's racism or the sexism of E.E. Smith's Triplanetary, you can sense that Asimov was writing at a time when society was starting to "deal" with these subjects.

Lastly, Asimov is a good, solid writer. But don't expect anything fancy. Like its noir predecessors, The Robot Novels are a working-man's prose work. I'm not sure if this was an intentional choice by Asimov or the next step in science fiction writerly-ness, one step removed from the pulps. But there seems to be a neo-Hemingway sensibility to the prose itself. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. And the job, as they say, needs doing.

Overall, I really enjoyed the read. The plot was a twisty as you'd expect from a quasi-noir novel in a science fiction setting. The characters, while showing their "age," were interesting and while not three-dimensional, they were also not two-dimensional, filling some fractal character space in between. Will I read it again? Probably not. But I might be convinced to dip into another Asimov down the road, who knows?

To tie this one off, one of my proudest moments as a writer came when I was able to tell my dad that my story "The Auctioneer and the Antiquarian, or, 1962" was to appear in Asimov's magazine. He was effusive in his praise, something that was counter to his demeanor most of the time. It really is one of my happiest memories of my dad. Little did I know that ten years later, he would be gone and I would be collecting from his belongings the copy of the magazine that I had sent to him.

Folks, ten years can slip away very, very quickly.

Hold on.

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The Dream and the Underworld

 

The Dream and the Underworld by James Hillman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Clearly an innovative work, I could not help but think that Hillman's admixture of psychology and esotericism was often strained, or at least at odds with itself. This is what happens when one tries to wrest both psychology and mythology out of their "traditional" contexts (the ones our intellects are accustomed to) and place them in a new, unique relationship. Hillman eschews many aspects of Freudian and Jungian analysis, while embracing others (particularly the idea of "depth psychology") in his new paradigm.

My issue in trying to fit The Dream and the Underworld in my head is the habit of Hillman in seeming to reject certain aspects of the waking world in relation to the sleeping world.

What one knows about life may not be relevant for what is below life. What one knows and has done in life may be as irrelevant to the underworld as clothes that adjust us to life and the flesh and bones that the clothes cover. For in the underworld all is stripped away, and life is upside down. We are further than the expectations based on life experience, and the wisdom derived from it..

This seems intuitive, on the face of it. But later in the book, Hillman espouses the need for therapy (which inevitably takes place in the waking world) that encourages the patient to immerse themselves in their dreams and simply run with it. There's really no clinical diagnosis taking place (none that I can see, anyway) beyond just encouraging people to dream and dream deeply, rejecting any imposition of waking world ideas on the sleeping world.

There's a certain pedantism present also. For example, Hillman lists three "habits of mind that impede grasping the idea of the underworld as the psychic realm": Materialism, oppositionalism, and christianism. I see his points and at least partially understand each one, but I find it interesting that rather than explain how the underworld can be understood as the psychic realm up front, he first sets out to imply that misunderstanding such is an error in judgement. That may be true, but there is little coaching (as one should expect from a clinical therapist) on how rejecting these impediments help the patient to get any kind of resolution to their issues.

Now, I probably sound like I hated this book, but that is completely untrue. I laud Hillman for "freeing" the dreaming world from the waking world. Rather than trying to translate dreams into waking world analogues, he encourages us to dive deeper, to plumb the depths of the underworld, with the understanding that it is a dangerous, strange place, an internal hell (in the Classical Greek and Roman sense of the word, not in a Dante-ish sense) that is intentionally separate from our day-to-day experience.

I admit that after having read this, I have allowed myself to delve deeper in my dreams, to leave the workaday world behind, and have felt a fresh breeze of good mental health, as a result. Ironically, one of the dreams I have had since reading this, a darkened hell-scape in which I met three witches over a pentagram, resulted in one of the most resful nights of sleep I've had in years. There was no night terror, no fear at all, really. I felt that I was embracing the place and that these crones were more guides than guardians. I don't remember all of the details, nor do I want to. I want the incentive to return and see where things go now.

One personal note: Hillman notes that dreams and death are closely intertwined, as if dreams were a practice run for death (which is reminiscent of the argument that Brian Muraresku makes in The Immortality Key that practitioners of ancient religion may have descended into the underworld by "dying" while taking psychoactive drugs in the well-known phenomanon of "ego-death" that often occurs while tripping on a heroic dose of psilocybin, for instance). Sometime during the early stages of the Covid outbreak, before I moved to my current home, I had a profound, extremely intense dream in which I saw and spoke with my deceased maternal grandmother (another crone, perhaps?). I saw her crystal-clear, as I remember her when I was a child, but with bright light streaming from her - an angel in the darkness, you might say. We spoke briefly, and I had the most profound sense of love and gratitude that I had felt in a long, long time. The dream ended when I "burst" with love and "died". I have no other way of putting it. I exploded with love and felt it in every single atom of my body, then, I simply expired. I awoke shaking and crying (for joy, not for sorrow), but felt physically exhilirated (resurrected, perhaps?), ready to face the many changes that were taking place in my life at that time.

I was told by a friend once, who had clinically died after a stroke, then came back, that "dying was the coolest thing I've ever felt." If that's what dying feels like, I'm really not worried about it at all. In the meantime, though, I'll be satisfied to dream a little deeper. I've still got a lot of things to do in the waking world!

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Loki

No, not the Norse god. The ferret. Loki. Our ferret.

It's been about three weeks now since we had to put Loki to sleep. I'm finally in a place where I can wipe away enough tears to actually write a little about Loki. He was a part of our family for about 8 years. Now, I don't have a lot of photos of Loki - my kids were way better about taking pictures of him than I was, and my facebook stalking skills aren't that great, so I can't just snatch up the images from my kid's FB pages. But this graphic helps illustrate, quite nicely, exactly what Ferrets are:

Yes, ferrets are members of the weasel family. In their wild state, they kill and eat rabbits and other small game. They are related to the mongoose, as well, famous for fighting cobras. Though we were tempted to see what Loki could do against a garden snake, it's probably a good thing we never put him in the ring. He was pretty tame, as far as animals go.

Ferrets, by nature, are playful, lazy, and at turns incredibly bright and incredibly stupid. I've heard them described as "kittens that never grow up," and I think that's a pretty apt description.

As a child, I had only one pet: my dog, Rusty. We owned Rusty when we lived in the Philippines, and when we moved back to the States, we gave Rusty to a friend of ours, a guy named Vern. I think I was about four at the time. My fondest memories of Rusty were riding his back through a foot of water during monsoon season after watching the Lone Ranger. Poor, dumb Rusty. Rusty was apparently eaten by someone not long after we moved away. This happens in a country as poor as the Philippines. Being four, I wasn't really capable of understanding such things, so it hasn't left any kind of emotional scar.

Fast forward many years to a time when my wife and I talked about getting a pet. We can't have cats or dogs, since there are too many allergies in the family. The kids had proven that they can kill a carnival goldfish in a matter of hours. We had a couple of hamsters, but, honestly, I hate those things. They love to bite, are not very cuddly, and don't bond at all. Yes, one of my kids cried when "Legolas" died, and I felt really sorry for my son, but as for Legolas' passing I didn't really bat an eye.

So we did some research and learned from some friends about ferrets. As I said before, they are playful and fun, they sleep a LOT (like almost 20 hours a day), and, as I did not say before, they litter train very well. They are pretty clean critters.

We went to the Humane Society to see if they had any ferrets and found that we had just missed a pair of them a day earlier. We let them know that we might be interested and asked if they could call us when the next ferret came in so we could meet it and see what we thought. It wasn't long after that, maybe a week or so(?) that we got a call. There was a ferret in, and he was up for adoption. We dropped everything to go check it out. Keep in mind that we were trying very hard to keep this a secret from the kids. They knew that we were planning on getting a ferret, since we bought a ferret cage and un-veiled it at Christmas, promising to get one as soon as we could. But they didn't know what the timetable was. We wanted to surprise them!

As we arrived, we asked about the Ferret and were told that someone was playing with him right at that moment - a "try before you buy" get-acquainted thing that the Humane Society likes to do with potential pet owners. Still, they took us to the room with the understanding that the couple in front of us had "dibs" on the animal, if they chose to take it home. We peeked into the room to see a young couple and a very active young ferret. After letting the animal have a little break for food, water, bathroom, it was our turn next.

I'll tell you, I fell in love. I had played with a ferret before, when I lived in Pennsylvania, but this guy was different. First of all, he was gimpy. We were told that he had the limp because he had fallen off a stair landing and broken his leg, at one point. He seemed to get along fine, but he had a funny little waddle to his walk and when he ran, he bounded sideways a bit. It was cute, to be honest, and a little endearing. I like rooting for the underdog or, in this case, the under-ferret. We played with him for about 15 minutes and realized that if we got a ferret, we'd have to be careful to train it not to bite so darned much. Some of that had to do with youth - this one, who the previous owners had named "Samson" was not even a year old. Still a pup, or at least a young child, in ferret years.

We expressed our interest in having "Samson" come be a part of our home and family, and the Humane Society told us that they'd get back with us as soon as they had word from the other family. I don't recall how long it was, no more than a day, that we got our answer. The other couple had "passed" - we had our ferret! We drove over and, after filling out a lot of paperwork and getting some instruction on how to take care of his needs, we brought him home.

The kids were giddy.

The first order of business was to get this guy a new name. "Samson" wouldn't do. And since ferrets don't have very good hearing, anyway, we figured we could rename him and he wouldn't even know the difference. After a long and complicated series of blind voting and a runoff, we finally settled on "Loki". For those who want to know, the second choice (and it was very close) was "Felix".

The second order of business was assigning who would do what in taking care of Loki. Someone had to clean his litter box and feed the little guy, and though he had a fairly sizeable cage, we needed to take him out of his cage a couple times a day and play with him. Of course, that chore was not difficult.

All was not bliss. We had to teach Loki not to bite, which wasn't helped by the fact that one of my sons actually liked the fat that Loki bit and would entice him to bite people's feet (including my son's own feet - I still don't understand the attraction there). And there were the inevitable disagreements about whose turn it was to clean his cage and litterbox. I don't know that that fight ever went away.

Still, we had many good times. We taught him not to bite (so much), but let him play rough when he wanted to. He learned just how hard he could bite and get away with it. The only exception was this strange, blue brain made of foam that he would latch onto and not let go. Ferrets don't make many sounds, but when he clamped his jaws down on that blue brain, he would make the strangest noises and we had to prise him off the darned thing. He would NOT let go. I think that, in some alternate dimension, ferrets fight an alien race of floating blue brains. I'm pretty sure of it, in fact.

From time to time, Loki would get sick, usually from eating something he shouldn't have in the yard. Oh, yes, we would take him outside from time-to-time and, later in life, he would actually walk over to the front door and beg to be let out. After taking him outside on a couple of winter days, though, he learned that when we opened the door, he might not want to go out after all. We couldn't let him out for too long - not that he could really get away. He was too slow for that. But for fear of birds of prey snatching him up (we have owls and eagles that sometimes frequent the neighborhood). He could hold his own against most other animals, I'm guessing. I always wondered who would win in a fight between Loki and a cat. If his instinct kicked in, I'd put my money on Loki, hands down. But he was so tame that he probably wouldn't know what hit him until it was too late.

Needless to say, we bonded. It didn't dawn on me until after he was gone, but for about three years, I was working a 4:10 shift at work, which meant that every Friday, Loki and I were alone, together, at the house. I took care of him a lot in that time, and had some great time playing with him and helping him explore the house. That was one of his favorite things to do, just to burrow under anything he could and investigate every nook and cranny of the house. He was particularly fond of laying down by my closed bedroom door and scratching at it, trying to get inside. I think he thought that Shangri-la was on the other side.

As happens, Loki grew old. A few months ago, he was looking really run down and he wasn't eating properly. So we took him to the vet and discovered that his blood sugars were all out of whack. This is fairly typical for older ferrets. They develop insulinoma, in which their body produces too much insulin, which does bad things to blood sugars. He stayed in the animal hospital for a week, and we got him regulated with twice daily doses of prednisone. The picture I am including below was from the time right after he came home. He was feeling cuddly and I had just given him his meds and I thought I'd snap a picture of him.

It's good that I did. About three weeks after he came home, I got home from work and discovered that he was in a bad way. He had bloody stool and was shaking almost uncontrollably. The meds didn't pull him out of the situation and he couldn't even walk properly. We had suspected for some time that his eyesight might be going, and it was apparent, that day, that he was completely blind. I bathed him and called my wife. We knew it was time. This would be our last trip to the vet.

I took Lokin around, because he couldn't walk himself, for one last exploration of the house. I was careful to take him into my old bedroom, which had now become my youngest son's bedroom, that Shangri-la behind the forbidden door. I wanted him to see it before we had to let him go. He seemed as thrilled as a very sick, very old ferret could be. I like to think that it was a bit of a "treat" for him.

So we called the kids that were in town and let them know that it was time to say goodbye. Unfortunately, we had just taken our oldest son to college in Iowa, and he couldn't be here. This was particularly painful because he, above all the rest, really did the most to take care of Loki, especially when Loki was entering the elderly stage. That's my one regret about having to put Loki to sleep when we did. Loki was in a lot of pain and discomfort and was definitely ready to go. But I wish Kaiser could have seen him one last time.

I cried for days. I almost called in to work, but somehow made it through the first day by staying at my desk and not talking to anyone. A few days later, as I was getting ready to take a shower, I remembered giving Loki that last bath and I cried like a baby. I haven't cried like that in a long, long time. Tears well spent, though.

I'm so glad that Loki could be a part of our lives. I had heard of people having a hard time losing pets before, but I never expected it to be so difficult. I'm wiping away tears as I write this, but overall, things are getting better. Time heals all wounds, and we will do our best to remember all the good, fun times we had together. We had a pawprint cast taken as a reminder of him, which is on our kitchen wall. He always loved the kitchen, usually because he could snatch up some tidbit from the floor before we could grab it from him. Little rascal!

We miss you, buddy . . .

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Ender's Game

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ender's Game is one of those canonical Science Fiction books that every fan ought to read. And I am one of those people who questions and sometimes scoffs at what I ought to do. This is likely the reason I put off reading it for so many years. My children, however, prevailed upon me to read it, claiming it was "the best book eeeevaaar," as only hyperbole-prone teenagers can do. I thought I'd give it a go so that I could at least understand all the inside jokes around the dinner table.

Sorry, kids, not the best book eeeevaaar. A great book, but not the best ever.

The simple prose of the book at the beginning is simply flat and somewhat boring. I read the first few pages and had to convince myself to push further. My reading tastes lean toward meaty: give me a few complex sentences, send me to the dictionary occasionally - I like the challenge. I felt that, despite the subject matter, the prose was altogether too thin. But I pushed on.

What I discovered as I went forward was that slowly, subtly, the prose progresses with the main character, Ender. The book seems to mature with the character, which made it more enjoyable as I went along. The step-by-step revelation of Ender's inner thoughts and motives started to pull me in. The plot itself was transparent - I could guess the ending with about a quarter of the book left. And I guessed correctly.

It's what happened after the obvious ending that blew me away. I won't give it away, but the last chapter of the book is an amazing piece of writing, tying together the seemingly disjointed pieces of the puzzle in a denouement that launched several sequels. You have to slog through the sparse parts and sometimes fake-like-you-care at the beginning of the book but when that last chapter hits - look out! It's an emotional bombshell. I'm not ashamed to admit that I almost cried at the end. It's that good.

And the writing ended up being that good, too. I found myself wishing that the whole book had been written in the style of the last chapter, but I understand, too, that the style itself builds up to a very satisfying conclusion.

There, I've fulfilled my obligation. And I see why some people like the book so much and why some people despise the book so much. If I would have quit the book halfway through or begun skimming, I would not have caught the brilliance at the end. And while I won't be reading all the remaining books in this universe, I think I will pick up Speaker for the Dead, because if it takes off the same way that Ender's Game (*ahem*) ended, it should be a fantastic read.

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