Writer's Block

Nice blog post on the subject here.

Jesus Is My Loa

What foot traffic there was in the warm afternoon saw Bad Bill coming and steered well clear, other than a wizened, coffee-colored crone, head tightly wrapped in bright silk and shawl bouncing wildly about her shoulders as she trotted up to Bill and pressed him with a handful of assorted objects.

            “Luck, sir?” she offered, shoving a pink string-doll into his face.  “Love?  Protection?”  She fanned a handful of the little dolls in his direction, wound together of different-colored yarn but each with pins for eyes and tucked into a tiny shift of rough cotton fabric.

            “No, ma’am,” Bill declined, trying in vain to step around her.  Vodun was not his brand of superstition, though it was common enough in New Orleans that he’d become accustomed to seeing it.

            “Beybey?” she changed propositions, scooping all the dolls into one gnarled hand and using the other to show a strand of leather on her shoulder bearing a series of brass medallions, like a thin belt threaded with multiple buckles.  The medallions were elaborately cut with the loops and lines that Bill recognized as the holy symbols of various Loas.  “Legba, he bring you luck.  Agwé for a sea journey, or if you a fisherman.”

            “I am not a fisherman, ma’am,” Bill objected mildly, “and I try very hard to avoid ever setting foot on any ship.”

            She looked him up and down, spying his pistols and his saber.  “You a fighter, ah?  A fightin’ man?  Fine, you want Ogoun, he swing the big machete, he watch over fightin’ men!”  She showed him the beybey of Ogoun, a web of triangles and asterisks framed by scrollwork.  “You want?  Ogoun, he a real bargain, big mojo Loa!”

            “Jesus is my Loa,” Bill turned the medallion down.  Bill was not a devout man, not a theologian, but he was a Christian, baptized and married as such, and he counted on God taking notice of the fact.

The Book's Cover

Help me understand this, because I can't.

Are we supposed to understand that Anakin left Tatooine as a young lad (true) and Luke came back as an adult (false)?

Are we to understand that these two men, father and son, turned their backs on each other (false)?

Are we to understand that these movies are movies about Tatooine (false, but getting closer)?

Are we to understand that Anakin is alive but Luke is a ghost (backward)?

Are we to understand that this cover struck George Lucas's fancy even though it is nonsensical, and he went with it, because he's George Lucas and he can do whatever he wants?

Yes, I think that's it.

Readers: when you have the chance, give input into your (book) covers.  They shouldn't be irrelevant gibberish.

Mr. Lucas: are you done crapping on the greatest franchise of my youth yet?  Please say yes.

Essential Classics: The Uncle Remus Tales

Joel Chandler Harris was a printer's devil for four years on the Turnwold Plantation in Georgia during the Civil War.

Later, as a writer for the Atlanta Constitution, he published in serial form a collection of stories he claimed to have heard in the slave quarters on the Turnwold Plantation, which were collected and published in 1880 as Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings.

Some people have found these stories controversial, and I don't really want to get into the controversy.  I will say this: I have read them, and I don't believe that Joel Chandler Harris made these stories up.  And if the stories are the genuine folk tales of nineteenth century black Americans, then quashing them because you dislike their presentation or because you find them disagreeable for political reasons silences the voices of those black Americans.

Besides, the stories are really, really funny.  The Tar Baby is the single most repeated bedtime story request my kids make.

I own two editions, and like them both.  This one is a straight reprint.  This one had been updated in its grammar and some of its references, making the collection more accessible to modern kids, without, I think, bowdlerizing it.

Family Is Complicated

            “You can,” Thalanes agreed, and he lay down on the roof of the cabin.  “It gives me great comfort to know that I’m traveling with such a powerful visionary.  So much comfort that I’m not afraid of a couple of old English men, just because they have a bit of grave-mold on them.”

            “I thought that Lucky John’s men killed them in Putney,” Sarah said.  “Wasn’t that the whole point of the Silver Lancers, John Churchill’s special squad with silver bullets and silver-headed pikes?  I read that equipping those men sucked the coffers of William of Orange dry.  All that, and they failed?”

“All that and they won,” the monk reminded her.  “They drove the Necromancer out of England, along with Black Tom and the sorcerer Hooke.”

“And sent ’em on over here to the New World so’s they could chase after me.  I jest git luckier by the day.”

Thalanes waited a moment.  “Are you frightened?” he asked.

            “Hell yes,” Sarah shot back.  She could feel her pulse racing and her breath was short. 

            “Would it help you to think of them as tragic figures?” Thalanes asked.

            “I don’t reckon it would,” she guessed.

            “Tom Fairfax was a rebel,” Thalanes said.  “He rebelled against his king, and then when he realized Cromwell was worse than what he’d replaced, he rebelled against Cromwell, too.  Cromwell crushed the Rising of York, and his punishment for poor Black Tom was cruel.”

            “Black Tom killed a lot of people with his knife, before and after he was dead.  I reckon that was cruel, too.”

            “Yes,” Thalanes agreed.  “And then his old friend Cromwell killed him with his own knife, and bound Tom into Cromwell’s service, forcing him to wield that same knife in the service of the man he hated, eternally.”

            “Cry me a river,” Sarah sniffed.  She gestured beyong the boat.  “Cry me the damn Mississippi.”

            “And Hooke asked to become what Cromwell made him.”

            “What?” Sarah was startled.  “Why in Hell would anybody ever want to become a walking corpse?”

            “To live forever,” Thalanes explained.  “Hooke was a great wizard, practical and theoretical, just like Sir Isaac.  When the only thing that drives you is curiosity, the thing you want most is time.”

            “And then what?  They all jest came to the New World and hid for a hundred years, waitin’ to jump out and grab me?”

            “No one knows quite what happened to Cromwell,” Thalanes said.  “There are persistent rumors that William Penn sheltered him in Pennsland.”

            “My grandfather?” Sarah was shocked at the revelation, but in context it was almost a minor surprise.  She was beginning to regain control of herself, and her accent.  “Why would he have done anything so stupid?”

            “Great-great-grandfather, actually.  Cromwell gave him his original land grant.  That’s where your great family estates come from, Sarah… they were bestowed by the Necromancer.  And after he’d been driven out, the Penns were established and King John had his hands full of other matters and no one was in any position to do much about it.  Besides, people liked William Penn.  He was a good man.”

            “Who made a deal with Hell.”

            “Maybe.  Or maybe he didn’t shelter Cromwell, and those rumors are just the baseless gossip of your family’s enemies.”

            “Dammit,” Sarah complained, “life is complicated.”

Pink Moon

And this one is not traditional.  "Pink Moon", by the elusive Nick Drake

A Horse Named Bill

A couple of songs with abstract and maybe nonsensical lyrics this weekend.  I think this first one is traditional, and the recording here is by Jerry Garcia and David Grisman.  This is actually the CD that was playing in the room when my son was born.