Monthly Archives: January 2013

Art and Culture, Asia, Family, Weather +Climate

Good Morning. Good Afternoon. Good Night.

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Winter                                                                 New (Cold) Moon

When Mark and Mary and I spoke today, it went like this:  “Good morning, Charlie.”

“Good afternoon, Mark.”   “Good night, Mary.”  8 am here.  5 pm Riyadh.  10 pm Singapore.

Another interesting aspect here.  Solar weather can upset internet connections over global spans.  Felt like we may have had some today.  Mark’s connection seems to be the weakest of the three.  Whether that’s Saudi tech or Mark tech or, in this case, the sun itself, hard to say.

Woolly brother Bill Schmidt down with a bad cold as the 2013 flu season begins to reach saturations last seen during the pandemic.  The older we get and the frailer we get, the more problematic the flu can become, a fact strongly underlined by the death of two healthy teenagers in Minnesota this season.

The flu shot, they say, is 60% effective.  Good, but far from perfect.  That leaves 40 out of a 100 still exposed.  A large number.  But, better than 100%.

4 more tours with Qin Shi Huang Di, then blank mornings on the calendar.

 

Art and Culture, Great Wheel, Great Work, Writing

A Sabbatical

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Winter                                                                    Moon of the Winter Solstice

Winding down.  Last two days of tours.  A vast stretch of mornings between next Monday and July 1st.  I’m excited.  Rewriting.  Writing.  Marketing.  Lots to do.

One outdoor to do over the next few months.  Get out in Anoka county.  Hike.  Take pictures.  Make some phenological observation.  Maybe take a week plus somewhere, hiking from a cabin or perhaps, if I can find one, a trail going from inn to inn.  I’m feeling the need for some natural rejuvenation.  Not cities.  Not books.  Not movies.  Not art.

Mostly though I want to lean into the writing.  Make it as full time as I can.

Myth and Story, Writing

A Good Lay (sorry, couldn’t help it)

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Winter                                                                       Moon of the Winter Solstice

The Lay of Thrym.  It recounts how Loki convinced Thor to visit jotunheim (home of the giants) in drag.  Thor woke up one day and his hammer, the famed mjollnir, had gone missing.  He complained to Loki and Loki agreed to set off on a quest to find it.

(detail from Marten Winge’s Thor’s Battle with the Giants)

Find it he did.  Thrym had it.  “Eight rasts below the surface of the midgard.”  A rast, according to one website, was a bit more than a mile.  Too far to dig, in other words.

Thrym offered Loki a deal.  He wanted Freyja, a goddess among the Aesir famed for her attractiveness to giants.

Loki agreed, returned to Asgard, told Thor and then went to see Freyja who rejected the idea.  A lot.

Loki had another idea.  He convinced Thor to wear Freyja’s bridal wear, including her famed Brisinga necklace.  Thrym was so taken with her appearance at jotunheim that he ordered mjollnir brought in and placed on her knees.

The lay then says, “Laughed Thor’s soul in his breast…”  And in the very next sentence:  “He first slew Thrym…and the jotun’s race all crushed…”

“So got Odin’s son his hammer back.”

 

Writing

A Change

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Winter                                                                Moon of the Winter Solstice

A softening.  Some change.  Kate thinks more vulnerable.  Maybe.  Now the writing seems more.  Why?  Not sure.  A certain confidence has crept up on me.  A willingness to succeed. Which. I. Have. Not. Had.  On the other hand, too, a willingness to fail.  Not to hide.

(Newone   Flannagan)

Seems like an odd change for a guy facing down 66 on this Valentine’s Day.  A welcome one though.  Now the writing feels real.  Like the rabbit.  Carried around so long and loved so well that it has become real.

 

Myth and Story, Writing

The Eddas

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Winter                                                        Moon of the Winter Solstice

Another day amongst the Eddas.  Reading.  Hearing.  Seeing.  Letting the world of the Nordic gods wash over me, immersing myself in its rhythms, its logic, its conflicts and wonders.

(Walhall by Emil Doepler)

Like the Celtic myths these suffer from an interpretation problem.  That is, they were recorded by Christians or by Romans.  In either case the translators and compilers of these myths had an ax to grind.  A fundamental conflict with the metaphysics, a desire to wipe out the pagan world motivated many Christian redactors of folk traditions.  Though, it must be said in fairness, not all.

In the Roman case there was a general willingness to let conquered people have their own religions, so in that sense there was not the same kind of problem.  Yet, there was a similar one in that Romans and pagans alike often compared folk deities to Roman deities.  But, more to the point, there was the assumption of cultural superiority on the part of Romans.  Since many of the conquered peoples were pre-literate, the first written evidence of their cultures comes in Latin.  That very act, transforming local stories into Latin entails translation, interpretation and assumptions, all from a single direction, the Roman, since the conquered peoples could not write.

Fortunately, for my purposes in this case, I don’t care.  Much.  It’s the spirit and the tenor and the names and the stories that I want, not scholarly accuracy.  At other points I’m very interested in the question of what was truly Celtic or Nordic and what an overlay from their interpreters.  Today, not so much, though I do look out for obvious interpolations of Christian or Roman assumptions.

Art and Culture, Politics, Sierra Club, Writing

Pruning

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Winter                                                                Moon of the Winter Solstice

Tomorrow the legislature goes into session and for the first time in three years I’m on the sideline.  A bit wistful.  A bit chagrined at getting out just when the getting might get good.  Yes. Yes.  Doubtful about the decision?  No.

It’s midwinter, the time for pruning in the orchard.  Fruit trees need space for air to circulate, fewer branches so they can focus their growth on less fruit with more vigor, and space, too, in which a harvester can reach.  Plus, if possible they need to be kept shorter.  Easier to harvest and less prone to damage during wind storms and heavy wet snow.

Just so my life of a year ago.  I’d allowed branches to grow every which way.  Too many branches.  The fruit might be greater in quantity but not as good a quality.  There was little space to reach inside the tree, watch an idea blossom, nurture it, then pluck it.  My tree had become overgrown and needed pruning.

It wasn’t easy.  The people at the Sierra Club are fellow travelers.  Folks who see a world and want it better.  Folks willing to do what it takes.  I admire that stance and have made it my own for much of my life.  I miss that sense of agency and I miss the camaraderie.

Yet.  The hours of driving, of having attention pulled away time and time again.  And the writing.  Peaking now, for some reason.  At this late stage of life.  It was the tree I had not nourished.  So I made the decision and pulled away.

I’ve pulled back from everything but Latin, art and writing now.  The art temporarily, till July 1st, but all else, at least for now, permanently.

And so the gavel will go down, the great sausage grinder start up its rusty gears and I will sit at home and think of Odin.

Writing

Fall From Heaven the Bright Stars

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Winter                                                                          Moon of the Winter Solstice

Been reading the Elder Eddas.  Here’s a quote that I think will start Loki’s Children:

“The sun darkens, earth in ocean sinks, fall from heaven the bright stars, fires breath assails the all-nourishing tree, towering fire plays against heaven itself.”

These ice landers had a way, an economic way with words.  Here’s another example:

“He is sated with the last breath of dying men; the god’s seat he with red gore defiles; swart is the sunshine then for summers after; all weather turns to storm.  Understand ye yet, or what?”

These stories captured my attention long ago and I’ve read versions, interpretations and scholarly material.  They have seeped their way into my own story-telling, not as templates or as immediate content, but as story evokers.  Sometimes I take bits, like a focus on Yggdrasil in Even the Gods Must Die.  Sometimes I take ideas, like Ragnarok and Loki’s children, as motivating forces, even characters inserted into the narrative I’m creating.

I treat them as inspiration, not material to follow slavishly.  I have the same relationship with the Celtic mythological material and have blended it into Missing and will continue to do that in Loki’s Children.

How long this immersion in them will last, I’m not sure.  Maybe a week of reading, maybe more.  Depends on how long it takes for Loki’s Children to press forward, demand that I get to work on it directly.  After this week I’ll have mornings free through July 1st.  That run will see me well into this project.

I also loaded into Scrivener one other full novel:  The God Who Wanted It All, a focus on Aztec mythology and Superior Wolf, a partially finished novel that I’ve struggled to get well underway.  Working in Scrivener is so much easier than the much clumsier methods required using word.

This guy showed up in some research I did.  His model for self-publishing looks very well thought out and creative.  Give him a look if that sort of stuff interests you.  He’s done a long piece with Beowulf as the backdrop.  Fantasy Castle Books.

Retirement, Third Phase

Enough is Enough

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Winter                                                            Moon of the Winter Solstice

With Kate fully retired and our income coming now from Social Security, my pension and our IRA 2013 will be the first year fully in the Third Phase.  This both changes everything and nothing.  Everything in that our forward scan has to take into account not only personal and marital growth, but the inevitable physical decline.  Already the markers of the latter have made themselves known.  Nothing in that none of this is a surprise nor does it impact, at least so far, our capacity to continue creative, full lives.

Money is not exactly tighter, but our flexibility has grown more constricted.  That is, we have sufficient assets and income flow for our needs; but, since they have to be managed as resources for an indeterminate amount of time, we can no longer flush out spare pots of cash for sudden trips or splurges.  This is a bit of a surprise. This mild surprise lies over against the relief and gratification of having enough.  Enough is enough.

In return for somewhat less fiscal flexibility though we have very flexible time.  Kate can focus on sewing, quilting, the grand kids, reading, cooking.  We can both spend time on the garden and the bee hives.  I can spend more time reading, writing, learning Latin, learning art history and going to museums.  The trade off is more than worth it.

So, what questions arise for the third phase given these realities?  I’m not sure right now, but I’m open to suggestions.

Bees, Garden, Great Wheel, Great Work, Our Land and Home, permaculture

Considering the Lilies of Our Fields

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Winter                                                                  Moon of the Winter Solstice

Greens.  Peppers, especially those sweet hot peppers.  Leeks.  Garlic.  Onions.  Shallots.  Beets.  Collard greens.  Tomatoes.  Carrots.  Herbs.  Then, we’ll have the apples, plums, cherries, pears, raspberries, strawberries, goose berries, currants, wild grapes.  And honey.  That’s our plan for next year.  Most of it anyhow.  We’ll probably sneak a few things in just to see what happens.

Three or four years ago we began a gradual winding down of the flower beds as annual events, turning them gradually toward perennials following one another, growing on their own.  We have to do some major work this spring along those lines, especially the garden bed on the house side of our front path.  That one I’ll dig out, amend the soil, and replant altogether.  Gonna take out the Viburnum.  It’s never done well.

We have pruning to do yet this winter.  And I still have more trees to fell.  Winter’s a good time for both.

There is, too, the fire pit and its immediate surround.  Mark helped us on the fire pit when he was here.  This year it will become functional.

Indulging the mid-winter sport of garden planning.  An indoor prelude to the outdoor music of the growing season.