Always the Twain shall meet

You gotta dig this Mark Twain fella.

He seemed to move from situation to situation like a mercilessly sharp camera lens, taking everything in and giving it back, inimitably, in Twain. Though he was one of the great humorists, he was often melancholy, and no one can find a smiling portrait of him anywhere. He experienced several incarnations within one lifetime: riverboat pilot (where he may well have cried out his own pen-name to indicate safe waters), rough-and-ready reporter in the Wild West who converted every story, momentous or trivial, into sharp-pointed satire, and - let's not forget - one of the most celebrated writers of the Western World.

But before he did all that, he wangled himself passage (sponsored by the newspaper he wrote for) on a luxury liner set to explore the Holy Land. The resulting semi-factual book The Innocents Abroad converted his fan base from small but loyal, to huge and clamoring. (Clamoring for his next book, that is.) Suddenly everyone wanted him to come to their town to lecture and spin his yarns, eager to partake of his dry drawl and lightning mind. His fame began to spread like a YouTube video gone viral, except that in this case, genius was behind it all.

I found this paragraph, and it's neat because it's so Twainian. On the Azores island of Fayal (don't ask me where that is), he and some fellow travellers hired some donkeys, presumably to carry them up and down rough terrain, and panic ensued. One donkey entered the open door of a house, scraping its rider off to land with a thud. At one point they all ran into each other and fell down like bowling pins. I guess you hadda be there.

So now I come to the neat part.

"The party started at 10 A.M. Dan was on his ass the last time I saw him. At this time Mr. Foster was following, & Mr. Haldeman came next after Foster - Mr. Foster being close to Dan's ass, & his own ass being very near to Mr. Haldeman's ass. After this Capt. Bursley joined the party with his ass, & all went well till on turning a corner of the road a most frightful & unexpected noise issued from Capt. Bursley's ass, which for a moment threw the party into confusion, & at the same time a portughee boy stuck a nail into Mr. Foster's ass & he ran - ran against Dan, who fell - fell on his ass, & then, like so many bricks they all came down - each & every one of them - & each & every one of them fell on his ass."

I wonder who else could've gotten away with this. Twain was known to be outrageous and play with social taboos, once lecturing a gentleman's club about the pleasures of "onanism" (a code word for masturbation), stating that it was the birthright of every red-blooded American boy. To say this at a time when most people thought it would make you go irretrievably mad, or at least make your guy parts fall off, was provocative indeed.

But then, the best writers don't colour inside the lines. Do they?

OK, Ted. . .

So I guess I was right about Ted Williams. After the homeless hero insisted he wanted rehab, needed rehab, was all ready to go to rehab, Dr. Phil laid out the plan: get on the plane right now, and fly to Pleasant Valley or wherever, where he could recover in privacy (recover in privacy, after just giving away where he'd be for the next 30 days???)

Then it started. The gaunt, glassy-eyed Williams, the most famous panhandling junkie in the world, the man who was loved and adored because he was homeless but still had a special gift (impossible!), began to shift around in his chair. He started wiggling around like a kindergarten kid with ADD.

His eyes shifted. He began to make excuses. I can't exactly transcribe his bafflegab, except to say that he wasn't going to get on that plane because he had to go to Columbus "to see his grandchildren and girl friend" first.

Columbus, where he skulked the streets, breaking laws and scamming citizens.
This was beginning to sound like an episode of Intervention, in which many of the addicts have "yeah, but" syndrome: Yeah, I want to go to rehab, BUT I have to take care of some things first (i.e., score some dope).

The headlines are saying he's either on his way to recovery, or has checked in. I hope so. Dr. Phil reluctantly let him go to Columbus, and my heart sank. Though he was escorted by the friendly man from Heavenly Hills or whatever that addiction spa is called, I have no doubt that Williams will give everyone the slip.

See, he'd rather drink and use and panhandle than have all that pressure on him to succeed. He doesn't know anything else. He has never been taught anything else. Dr. Phil revealed that he had missed, not one, not two, but three important appointments, just didn't show up. Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding: he's not reliable! A man who's been living on the street for years isn't reliable. Didn't anyone think of that when they handed him all those absurdly inflated opportunities?

I hate to have to say it, but I am very doubtful that Ted Williams will find long-term sobriety and/or recovery (and the two are not the same!). What happened to him was flukey and not really planned, in spite of that infamous piece of damp cardboard. He wants to run. He looked ready to bolt yesterday on Dr. Phil, his eyes full of primal fear. He just wanted to get the hell out of there. Rehab? Can this guy get through even one day sober?

If you watch Intervention, and I stopped doing so some time ago because they all seemed like one big fat dysfunctional family (most of them bankrolling the addicts' drug or alcohol habit "so we'll know where he is"), you often see an end caption saying the person was thrown out of rehab after a few days for using. Then at the very end, the producers desperately put together a happy ending, saying the addict has two weeks clean or something like that, and has moved back in with the family, now completely recovered and with all their generational conflicts resolved.

I think Ted Williams misses the street, where he at least had some sense of control. The wraith with the feverish eyes I saw yesterday was probably quite drunk on Grey Goose or whatever that rotgut is called, but also terrified. Terrified of capture. Terrified of giving it all up.

Though this is a compelling story, it's also a revealing one. And, as usual, we aren't learning a thing from it.

Napoleon in rags

"Ted Williams, “The Man with the Golden Voice”, has agreed to check into a rehabilitation facility after prompting by psychologist and T.V. personality, Dr. Phil McGraw today.

Williams blames drugs and alcohol for his living in homelessness several years and admitted on the Dr. Phil Show he still struggles with alcohol.

McGraw offered to personally pay for the treatment. Williams agreed to go at some point, but refused to commit to a definite date.

This news comes two days after Williams was detained by police following a yelling incident with his daughter in Los Angeles.

Formerly homeless, he has became a media sensation after video of his “God-given gift” hit Youtube earlier this month. Since his discovery while panhandling at the side of the highway, Williams has made multiple television and radio appearances and has offers for to do a Super Bowl commercial as well as voiceovers for the NFL network."

Well, pilgrims, y'all can guess that I'll be glued to Dr. Phil today after reading that bit of news. I will admit, when I first heard the story of the miraculous transformation of this street thug, I had my doubts. I sort of felt like they'd find him in a couple of months, having blown through hundreds of thousands of dollars, lying face down in an alley.

What really chills me is that this Ted character does not do the correct Intervention bit and say, "OK, OK, all right, stop clawing at me, stop spitting in my ear, I'll go, I'll go, I'll GO!" With the airplane gunning (heh, heh) its engines on the tarmac, just waiting for Poor Old Joe to board for the Del Boca Vista luxury resort/weight loss clinic and rehab centre (from which Old Joe gets thrown out after a few days for sticking needles in his arm). Instead, he says, yeah, Phil. Yeah, Phil, that's a great idea. Now SHOW ME THE MONEY.

Con artists con. Panhandlers panhandle. If you pull somebody off the street and say, "here's a million dollars," they'll roll around in it like so much powdered cocaine.

I don't think Ted Williams (and I doubt if that's his real name) has a God-given gift, except for robbery, fraud, multiple addiction, lying, cheating, scamming, probably lots of violence, and assuming the identity of a sane person capable of showing up for work on time (or ever).

But we created this monster. We loved the idea of transforming his smelly old life just by offering him superprestigious jobs using that golden voice of his (and by the way, just how did he fall on such "hard times" that he ended up skulking around figuring out who he could roll next?) The transformation of Ted Williams is a supreme act of ego on the part of these idiots (including Oprah) who secretly want to pat themselves on the back for saving him.

Meanwhile, he's floundering around, having so-called reunions with family members who no doubt want to suck him white (while the cameras roll), screaming at his daughter so loudly that the police come, bearing livid scratch-marks on his face that surely aren't from Snowball the Cat.

He lied about his sobriety, and now his rap sheet is emerging, dug up by that bunch of subversive geniuses at Smoking Gun who never take anything at face value.

Ted Williams has very little face value. I don't care that they cut his hair and somehow plugged in the missing teeth.

Here I quote the Master, that fast and slashing, flashing Jack of Diamonds who rips the mask off even the most notorious traitor:

Princes on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're all drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts
But you better take your diamond ring
You'd better pawn it, babe

You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal

Fame and prestige can be the worst scam of all, chewing people up and spitting them out. Williams may have made it on the street (just), but will he make it in these shark-infested waters? The power-trippers and ego-inflated idiots who did this to him probably lack the self-honesty to recognize that they might just destroy him.

So now I must ask them: how does it feel?

The mystery tramp

You say you'd never

compromise

with the mystery tramp but now you

realize

he's not selling any

alibis

as you stare into the vacuum

of his eyes

and say

do

you

want

to

make

a

d

e

a

l

l

l

l

l

l

One more time

I got watching an absurd Steve Martin comedy called Bowfinger last night. I saw it when it first came out about 10 years ago and had forgotten most of it. Especially this. This was the opening music, and I was blown back by it. It seemed to be speaking directly to me.

Forgive the lack of visuals. Insert heart here.

Jumping frogs and other phenomena of the literary swamp

I've been on a bit of a Mark Twain kick ever since I saw a superb PBS documentary about his life a few months ago. I got a copy of the DVD, along with two massive biographical tomes, the kind you can hold in each hand to attain rippling biceps in only three weeks.

I want to reread Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn to see how much they've changed since my youth (ahem), but until then I tread deep water in these books, packed with too much information. Twain wasn't the nicest fellow, was an egotist, was moody, was often suicidal, and definitely pushed his own agenda. Good thing, too, or the following harrowing scene (which took place when Twain was still relatively young, but with a growing readership) would have erased Huck Finn from our collective memory:

"Sam, 'charmed and excited', had every reason to believe that a contract would be extended to him as soon as he walked through Carleton's door. So certain was he of this that he dashed off a private letter to his sponsor at the Alta, John McComb, in early February, boasting that he was about to 'give' Carleton a volume of sketches for publication. The paper printed a brief summary of this letter for Mark Twain's followers in mid-March - nearly a month after Sam had kept his appointment with Carleton, and been given the bum's rush.

"He never forgot it: his diffident arrival in the publisher's office at 499 Broadway, the brusque statement of the clerk that Mr. Carleton was in his private office: his admission to the great man's quarters after a long wait; Carleton's icily impersonal greeting: 'Well, what can I do for you?'

(Editor's note. This would happen to me on a good day. But wait! Here comes the best part.)

"Sam's abashed response - that he was keeping an appointment to offer a book for publication - triggered a temper tantrum from Carleton that lives in the annals of bad editorial judgement. . . Whatever the impetus, Carleton treated his speechless visitor to a vintage New York-style tongue-lashing At the end, he swept his arm around the room and delivered the coup de grace that will forever be associated with his name:

'Books - look at those shelves. Every one of them is loaded with books that are waiting for publication. Do I want any more? Excuse me, I don't. Good morning."

After this, the biographer Ron Powers cites the infamous "Whales, Mr. Melville?" (to which I add, "Scribble, scribble, eh, Miss Bronte?"). These can be lumped in with "These guitar groups are on their way out" (Beatles) and "Who's this Bob Dylan?" ( - oh, and - one of Twain's early magazine stories found an enthusiastic audience, but unfortunately the editor spelled his name Mark Swain.)

There are whole books full of "famous rejections", which are supposed to make the aspiring writer jump up from his/her bed of suicidal depression, all fluffy and flumphy like freshly-plumped pillows. It doesn't work, however, because greatness has a way of coming through no matter what. Or does it? How many Huckleberry Finns languished in drawers somewhere, only to be thrown in the fire a la Thomas Carlyle when the weather got cold?

It's too depressing to contemplate.

Man walks into a publisher's office. Disreputable-looking, shabby clothes, big intimidating cookie-duster of a moustache and untameable head of (red) hair. Obviously a bad character. Has this manuscript he thinks he can sell me, haven't looked at it yet and haven't got time. Worked as a rough-and-ready reporter out West somewhere, has nothing to say to a sophisticated New York audience. Wrote one story, something about a jumping frog, that was published all over the country, but who wants to hear about a jumping frog? This fellow seems to have a million ideas spilling out of him, and we can't have that. He'll stain the Wilton carpet. Uncouth, he is. Smells like tobacco and gin. A man's man, with feverish ideas. But the stunned look, the look of a small child who has been slapped instead of kissed, reveals him to be just another no-talent who can't take his rejections like a man.

Lamborghini in Black: Morgan Park Stallion

Do I seem obsessed with horses? Oh dear. Somehow or other, in my later years, it has come back stronger than ever. I wonder why this is.

It may, in fact, be my eldest grandchild who brings me back to riding. There's a stable near where she lives, in a woodsy, gorgeous old part of North Vancouver. Not sure if they rent horses or not. We'd have to start slow. But oh my God, to be back in the saddle again!

(There is controversy about how these horses are trained, with unnatural weights and even chains attached to their feet, and - even worse - acid substances applied to their ankles so that they throw their legs up in pain. What is wrong with people, anyway? According to captions, this horse was not trained that way. And oh God is he beautiful. I love the clean way he picks up his feet, his high but not strained head carriage, and the effortless (seemingly) way he changes from one gait to another. This is a combination of a well-trained horse, and a well-trained rider.)

(And how I love that gorgeous waterfall of a tail that lightly sweeps the ground.)

Murderous rage

Well, almost.

When a non-proficient computerphobe like me has to retrieve a file that contains an entire novel (several years' worth of sweat and hope), it's a bit disconcerting when said file won't come up.

This is what happened yesterday, leading to a clever little post. But you didn't hear what happened last night.

Oh, dear.

My husband tried to fix it for me. He tinkers around on my computer, putters. Clicks here and there. It takes a long, long time. In many ways, his skills are worse than mine.

There, I've said it. But I thought he could pull this thing up out of oblivion.

When he finally got it, I wanted him to email me a copy so I wouldn't run into this shit again. He right-clicked the file name and began to mouse over and over and over "delete". My panic and terror was rising. He has been known to slip, to falter and click on the wrong thing.

I could see my work disappearing into a hole. I exploded. He exploded. We almost physically fought. He stormed out the door and I tried to push it shut, but he was pushing it back. Holy hell! I finally won, slamming it hard. Good thing his finger wasn't in the crack.

Today I found myself writing this thing - God, this thing about how nobody gets it, I mean nobody, not even my life partner. People think this is a little hobby, like baking or knitting, not bloodletting onto the page. I write because it's my twin: flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. Not writing is unthinkable. Is it its own reward? Not if you're a real author.

And I crossed that thresshold years ago.

Did it create expectations? You bet it did. Expectations that I would go on publishing on a regular basis, doing a little better each time, building an audience steadily, until. . .

Instead, it has been like being tied to a wild horse and dragged over the rocks.

The economy failed. That's one thing. My illusions about becoming an instant celebrity died. I had to ask myself why I was really doing this. But ideas thrust themselves into my brain, notwithstanding. They said, "Write me, write me!" I could not resist.

I have two novels unpublished, The Glass Character and Bus People, and a book of poems (The Red Diary) about the diary of Anne Frank. I think all of these manuscripts deserve to see print. I sent queries on Anne Frank out, only a few because I couldn't seem to stand it. I didn't think I'd have to slam my head any more. I remember in the '90s sending out 65 queries for a novel called A Singing Tree. I now see it was unpublishable, but who knew at the time? 65 queries, zero acceptances.

I'd quit, yes, but when Better than Life and Mallory came out, reviewers were giving me the kind of notices a writer dreams of. Now I wonder if it was worth being dangled like that.

Would I rather not have gotten them? Well.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

I suppose I should quit bellyaching and try to be more constructive. This is more like a diary entry than a blog post. But sometimes it hurts so much. I wish I could go do something normal. Nobody in my family or small circle of friends gets this. They just don't. If it's so painful, why not just walk away?

Across the Great Divide

There are few things more horrific in a writer's life than discovering that a manuscript is gone.

I mean, just GONE. Not there. Not where it used to be. Or, if there, filed under some name so obscure, it will never come to mind.

After a lifetime of writing first drafts by hand, and slowly putting them into the computer chapter-by-chapter (printing them out all the way), I decided - or not, it just happened - to skip that step and write directly on the computer.

It worked so well, I could hardly believe it. It took so much of the drudgery out of the process. I could type like the wind. Mistakes didn't matter. I could move blocks of text around. It was great! (Why didn't I think of this before? What a stick-in-the-mud I had been.)

But I had no idea I'd undertaken a paradigm shift (please forgive the awful term, but I can't think of another one: whackydoodle, maybe?) of monstrous proportions. When writing in longhand, the novel would develop in 3D. I could scribble in the margins, cross out paragraphs and then re-insert them elsewhere, shuffle pages around with different potential bits of story on them. Throw things out that I knew were superfluous. Eventually, organically, the manuscript would grow and take shape, with a parallel refining process happening on the computer.

It worked for about six novels. Why did I stop? Because when I sat down and began writing The Glass Character, I never expected to start a new novel. I was just going to make some notes on Harold Lloyd (honest!). But something happened: some sort of dam broke. It started to pour rather than trickle, so I figured this swift new method was the right way to do it.

I guess I must have tried to duplicate the old system electronically, or something, but it was a complete disaster. I saved each bit of material, potential or actual or even horrible, in a separate file. Then I decided to clump the files together, but I didn't erase all the individual ones because I wasn't sure where they were.

I ended up with two "sets", but not duplicates of each other, though close in some places, plus maybe thirty more individual files scattered around under names I could not remember. A jigsaw puzzle, potentially whole, but rattling around in a box. At the time I wrote it, I knew I'd remember how to retrieve all this: easy stuff! It always worked for me before. (Ironically, at this point The Glass Character existed unequivocally in only one form: the hard copy.)

I'm no Luddite, but it seems to me that making the leap from pencil to keyboard is more radical than people realize. I did a reading at the Vancouver Public Library a few years ago, and was astounded when all the other writers said (or admitted, with considerable embarrassment) that they wrote their initial drafts in longhand. Truly, I had believed I was the only one left.

Yesterday was not a good day, but nevertheless I sucked it up, reassembled the puzzle and put together seven queries. I hate odd numbers, but this was as far as I could go without collapsing. Knowing that the really big presses (Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins) won't look at unagented work, and falling completely flat in my search for an agent (remember the rubber stamp?), I knew I'd have to start with the mid-list presses where I can represent myself. This wasn't a bad thing: I like those presses, and I like what they can do for authors.

Then imagine my dismay (dismay, dismay) when I found out that one of the most potentially desirable presses had had to downsize so radically that they moved out of their old quarters and in with another publisher: the literary equivalent of moving back in with your parents.

It wasn't a good sign. I had to assume the other six were struggling equally. Many had switched their main mandate to non-fiction (with a side of kids' books, which are usually written as ongoing series) because there is a perception that literary fiction just can't make it in a competitive market.

I think publishers need a paradigm shift of their own. I believe that literary fiction WILL sell via Kindle and other electronic media. But these guys and gals aren't yet thinking in those terms. They're thinking of paper and book-binding and expensive author tours. What about ONE YouTube video that goes "viral"? It'd be the equivalent of a hundred author tours, not to mention millions of trees in an already-denuded forest.

I'm really up against it here, and I've never known it more than I do now. I feel so strongly about this novel (which I haven't written much about, with my deep dread of jinxing it) that at the moment I have to continue to plod on in the old system. Sending paper and envelopes and stamps (with my DNA on them: some small comfort) is horse-and-buggy stuff.

But there's another side to this. Emailing manuscripts to publishers isn't a magic solution, as I've found that they're very easy to ignore or even delete. That's because editors don't yet know how to work with them.

They don't pile up on your desk in a slippery mountain, begging for your attention. They're more abstract than material. Subconsciously or otherwise, editors are used to riffling papers and marking things up with a red pen. A link in your inbox just can't compete.

How do I know this? Oy vey, how I know this! That's the whole point of this post. You don't just chuck out decades of habit and experience, and methods that have worked efficiently for years and years, just because the rest of the world has told you to throw the whole thing out and start over.

We're between systems here, and writers are suffering because of it. If and when I write another novel (and a plot is squeezing itself into my brain right now), I may well use my computer, but I will be extremely careful about saving things. I can't just stick every fragment into a separate file, being certain I'll remember where I put it months later.

I'll try to be aware, as I write, that I am attempting to make a leap across a great chasm. It isn't just a different method of production, but a radically different system, demanding a whole new way of thinking.

Hey, mid-list publishers! Are you listening? I think I might be on to something here. And while I'm at it. . . listen, have I got a novel for you!

I don't like the sound of 2011

I don't like odd numbers, and I like even less the way people have been saying dates since the year 2000 (and did anyone ever say "the year 1968" or "the year 1921"?)

You know how it goes. Two thousand and one. Two thousand and two. Two thousand and forever. Two/too many thousands of syllables (always with a completely superfluous "and" in the middle, as if we didn't know what followed). This reminds me of some dimwitted cartoon giant counting out golden eggs or something. "Now lemmee see. Two towsan' an' one! Two towsan' an' two!"

When the Olympics came along, it was suddenly a whole lot more sleek and modern to say "twenty-ten". I liked it. Three syllables. Now that we're into the next year, an odd number so I already hate it, people are lapsing back into "two thousand and eleven" - a spiky, pointy, ugly railroad spike of a number, with SEVEN syllables. (Another odd number. Gronk!)

Hey, did we used to say "one thousand, nine hundred and seventy two"? No, because people had better sense back then.

Here's another weird thing that nobody notices. We had the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, and then the - . The what? That decade never did have a name, and this one won't either. In fact, naming decades is over. I don't think it will ever happen again.

Howcome there are horses in this post? Cuz I have some nice pics left over. Booyah.

Back in the saddle again

Nature or God saw fit to erase my last post. Since I'm too thick-headed to get the message, I'll try again. For New Years, I wanted to return to a favorite subject (except that by now, after the 50th attempt to make it stick, I'm sick of it all). I'll have to address my feelings about all this later, perhaps when I get over this 3-week flu bug that shows no signs of abating.

So here it is, a florid but delicious poem about a florid but delicious subject. IF it posts.


The Arab’s Farewell to His Steed

Caroline Norton (1808-1877)

My beautiful! my beautiful! that standest meekly by.
With thy proudly-arched and glossy neck, and dark and fiery eye!
Fret not to roam the desert now with all thy winged speed:
I may not mount on thee again – thou’rt sold, my Arab steed!

Fret not with that impatient hoof, snuff not the breezy wind,
The farther that thou fliest now, so far am I behind,
The stranger hath thy bridle rein – thy master hath his gold;
Fleet-limbed and beautiful, farewell! – thou’rt sold, my steed, thou’rt sold.

Farewell! Those free, untired limbs full many a mile must roam,
To reach the chill and wintry sky which clouds the stranger’s home.
Some other hand, less fond, must now thy corn and bed prepare;
The silky mane I braided once must be another’s care.

The morning sun shall dawn again, but never more with thee
Shall I gallop o’er the desert paths, where we were wont to be;
Evening shall darken on the earth and o’er the sandy plain
Some other steed, with slower step, shall bear me home again.

Yes, thou must go! The wild, free breeze, the brilliant sun and sky,
Thy master’s home – from all of these my exiled one must fly.
Thy proud dark eye will grow less proud, thy step become less fleet,
And vainly shalt thou arch thy neck thy master’s hand to meet.

Only in sleep shall I behold that dark eye glancing bright;
Only in sleep shall I hear again that step so firm and light;
And when I raise my dreaming arm to check or cheer thy speed,
Then must I starting, wake to feel – thou’rt sold, my Arab steed.

Ah, rudely then, unseen by me, some cruel hand may chide,
Till foam-wreaths lie, like crested waves, along thy panting side;
And the rich blood that’s in thee swell in thy indignant pain,
Till careless eyes, which rest on thee, may count each starting vein.

Will they ill-use thee? If I thought – but no, it cannot be.
Thou art so swift, yet easy curbed; so gentle, yet so free;
And yet, if haply, when thou’rt gone, this lonely heart should yearn,
Can the hand that casts thee from it now command thee to return?

Return! – Alas, my Arab steed! what shall thy master do,
When thou, who wert all of his joy, has vanished from his view?
When the dim distance cheats mine eye, and through the gathering tears
Thy bright form, for a moment, like the false mirage appears?

Slow and unmounted shall I roam, with weary step alone,
Where with fleet step and joyous bound thou oft hast borne me on;
And sitting down by that green well, I’ll pause and sadly think,
" ‘Twas here he bowed his glossy neck when last I saw him drink!’ ”

When last I saw thee drink! – away! The fevered dream is o’er!
I could not live a day and know that we should meet no more!
They tempted me, my beautiful! for hunger’s power is strong-
They tempted me, my beautiful! but I have loved too long.

Who said that I had given thee up? Who said that thou wert sold?
‘Tis false! – ’tis false! my Arab steed! I fling them back their gold!
Thus, thus, I leap upon thy back, and scour the distant plains!
Away! who overtakes us now may claim thee for his pains!

My beautiful! My beautiful!

http://www.myhorse.ca/horseoftheweek/index.htm

Let us hope this link works for you. These are the most astonishingly beautiful horse photos I have ever seen.

True Grit, by True-grit

Y'know, cowpokes, just about the last thang I wanna do right now is write a movie review. So I won't, even though I liked the new take on True Grit by the quirky Coen Brothers (previously known for putting characters through the wood chipper and stuff like that).

Like a lot of non-Western fans, I liked the old True Grit and wondered why it needed to be remade (though I was delighted to find that, even with all the changes, they retained one line, the immortal "Fill yore hands, you son-of-a-bitch!"). Jeff Bridges did a creditable (and credible) job filling the huge boots of John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn, this old guy who likes-da shoot up people, like. So this little girl, this Maddie whose father got shot? She goes to him.

She isn't sorry, but that's not the part I liked. I liked the fact that nearly all the men in this thing were shaggy-like. They had long greasy hair and chin spinach and "mustaches" (the sheer size of them demanding a plural form). Just look at an old photo of Buffalo Bill Cody, will you (I mean, right now), and you'll see how awe-then-tick-lakk this-all is. No clean-shaven guys here, no razors on the prairies (or if they had 'em, they were just a-usin'-em to flick chickens). Even the eyebrows were different then, way out. They grew different, maybe it was the soil.

So this Rooster guy, he has this horse, and it don't look like any Western movie horse ever seen, not like Trigger or Silver or Desperado or whatever-else. In fact, all the horses in this movie look like real Western horses, a surprise that was almost a shock. Cowboys liked their horses compact, tough, low to the ground and savvy, none of this Arabian dish-faced mane-tossing bullshit. Just get the job done, and on the minimum volume of oats.

These horses filled the bill. They weren't showy, in fact some-o'-dem were sort of mingy little things, their necks straight, coats shaggy-like as if they lived outdoors, which back then they did. One of them was an Appaloosa, the kind with the dots on the butt, and the dots stand up like felt. Don't know where they got them, but certainly not from Horse Central Casting. Maybe they scrounged around to find them in the real West? Who knows, but these horses resonated with me and my former life rocking along the trails in a beat-up old Western saddle on a mingy but sweet little horse named Rocky.

Nobody knew his pedigree, because like a lot of horses he didn't really have one. Cowboys went on faith back then, and good trading. Their bloodlines were mostly mustang with a little bit of a racehorse that broke loose once by mistake. And Spanish Conquistador blood that went way, way back, so once in a while one of them, mingy or not, would start high-stepping all by himself. You'd hear a single, sad note of Spanish guitar, then he'd go back to lopin' on down the lone prai-ree.

I liked the horses and the chin-spinach and the foul talk in this movie (not really obscenity, just language snarled and spat and raunched, as if, in the words of Tom Robbins, it had been strained through Davy Crockett's underwear). I wanted to get on one of those horses, an easy climb. I could lean down beside his thick ol' neck and tell him things. He'd know what I wanted before I knew it myself. He wouldn't ask much, but would give all he had.

A horse gets ridden into the ground in this movie, and it's hard to watch, but it's only to save a little girl's life. The horse literally runs until it groans and staggers and collapses, and Rooster Cogburn shoots it in the head, a mercy. They don't make horses that game any more. They don't make horse casting directors that pick mingy little, game little, shaggy little mustangs that run 'til they drop, either.

I'd like to see more of it.

My favorite Christmas music of all time

Noel!

A Christmas Miracle

Below is an actual email, from an actual editor in a publishing house. A couple posts back, I went on a rant about the habit of some publishers of getting all the loose-end rejections out by the end of the year, so that they usually arrive a couple of days before Christmas. This reminds me of kicking Tiny Tim in the shins, and I wrote to him and said so. I was expecting either no reply or a blast, and got this instead!

Kind of gives me hope.

December 23, 2010

Margaret Gunning
3589 Chestnut Street
Port Coquitlam, BC
V3B 5V3

Dear Ms. Gunning,

Please accept my sincere apologies for the inconsiderate delivery of our letter. I very much agree with you that declining manuscripts in advance of the holiday season is an insincere act to those whose craft is an inconceivably laborious and passionate one. While sending rejection letters is a solemn task, I know it is incomparably more severe to receive them. We strive to be as sensitive to authors as possible in our responses, which means replying promptly, albeit not always personally. In this instance I made an accidental, thoughtless error that although was not malicious in intent, was cruel in its execution. I am very sorry.

Regarding your manuscript, The Glass Character, I thought your narrator’s voice was very strong, and I personally enjoyed the subject of Harold Lloyd himself. Douglas & McIntyre’s fiction program has refocused, though, with a vision to acquire books that explore the boundaries of genre, style as well as content. Our editorial board found your novel topically intriguing; however, we did not feel the setting, atmosphere, and narrative arc were entirely developed or successful. Notwithstanding, we think that you will indeed place The Glass Character, and wish you the very best in doing so.

Thank you again for advocating in defense of yourself and other writers. I have truly taken your advice sincerely, and will strive to be ever more conscientious and diligent in the future.

I wish you a very happy new year.

Best regards,

Ebeneezer Editor

Angel of grief

This angel has lowered her head in grief because she could not be there to save someone.

She could not be there to save a little girl, four years old, laughing and shrieking with delight as she sledded down a hill during a rare, thick Vancouver snowfall.

She could not be there to stop the truck as it rounded the corner, its driver blinded by snow.

Turn back time, turn back time. . . just take time away. Extract this sorrow from my blood, draw it from me now, for soon my heart won’t bear it.

I am only on the outermost fringes of this tragedy, and have no right even to speak of it, but it reverberates in me still. For this astonishing, unspeakable loss happened two years ago, on Christmas Eve.

Some say everything happens for a reason. I want to pin them to the wall and ask them to prove it.

Some say God never gives us more than we can handle. I want to take their hand and pull them into the suicide wards, the prisons. Just take a look.

I don’t know what potion can relieve such horrors, losses that can’t even be spoken, except that I can’t keep silent and make these cute and whimsical little posts forever.

Everyone assumes everything’s just fine with me because of that whimsy. They don’t see it as the smokescreen it is. The anodyne, the analgesic for a sometimes overwhelming grief.

I too must bear the completely unjust, undeserved and senseless horror of this, and keep on, though my grief is but a particle of her parents’, her grandparents’. Everyone’s.

Sometimes people say, when spared some dreadful calamity, “My angel must have saved me.” Oh yes. And this angelic little girl lost her life and her future in a snowdrift on the sweetest night of the year?

If you are reading this and if you pray, pray. Just pray, don’t even bother with words. If you don’t pray, try. Anything will do. Just begin.

Once more, into the void

You've got to ask yourself why you do this.

Why, when it's already happened two or three times.

It goes like this. After having published two well-received novels (though admittedly, no threat to Stephen King or J. K. Rowling), you write another one. One that you're proud of, one that you are sure will find a home with relative ease.

Surprise: it's punch, punch, punch in the face. Sorry, but that's what it is: all those rejections, as if your work never existed and never drew all those (now sadistic-sounding, hope-dangling) reviews.

Maybe it's all over. N'est-ce pas?

More than once - perhaps three times, since I began to send out fiction - I've received a form rejection at a certain time of year.

The week before Christmas.

This is a season of fizzy hope, anticipation of a wonderful holiday followed by a fresh start in the new year. So why do editors routinely send these things out NOW?

Well. . . like everybody else, they want a clean desk to come back to in 2011. A lot of loose ends in the form of rejected novels are lying around, and one has to be efficient, doesn't one?

Isn't it better to get the slight/damage over with now, rather than prolonging the illusion/delusion of acceptance for a couple more weeks?

Aren't you a real writer? Don't you know what that entails? Be a man! Suck it up, girl friend! It's just a rejection. At least the one I got today was a form letter, not my own letter sent back to me with a rubber stamp on the corner (which actually happened to me, and which I wrote about a couple of months ago).

One must never, never, never, never, NEVER answer a rejection. Don't express an opinion, or it will get around like wildfire that you are "difficult" and no one will want to work with you. Or at very least, they'll think you're oversensitive and probably shouldn't be working in the field at all.

So I answered the rejection. I just - told the guy. Told him, not that he shouldn't have rejected my work (which he shouldn't), but that his timing is lousy and steps all over the feelings of writers everywhere.

He will likely be angry, piqued, may even send me a blast I'll receive on New Years Eve or some-such. They always get angry if you say what you feel, or hope.

Especially, in the week before Christmas.

For Glen

We hardly knew you

Below is a reprint of a piece I wrote in 2005. I could not believe it was that long ago: I thought it was maybe a couple of years. I lost a lot that year, including my health, but this was a stunning blow.

When he disappeared, there was a police report describing Glen Allen as 6' 2", 150 pounds, with a front tooth missing. A recent photo revealed a gaunt figure with feverish eyes and an attempt at a smile. Except during crushing depressions, Glen had always fought his weight and was normally closer to 225. The way he died was eerily like the street people he knew and loved.

It was one of those longstanding correspondences. I suppose they happen now, electronically, with almost always a sexual connotation, a bartering, a price.

There was no price here. Only his life.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

December is long and dark at the best of times, and this year the merriment of Christmas was dulled by a death. When I opened my daily paper to the obituary section, I saw a face that made me gasp, a face I had never actually seen but knew as well as my brother’s. I read the account of his death in disbelief, shocked but not completely surprised that my friend had frozen to death beside some railroad tracks in Toronto, full of pills, after wandering away from a psychiatric ward.

My friend was Glen Allen, newspaperman, Maclean’s correspondent, world traveller, insightful and witty writer, gentle, courageous (and, at the end, lost) soul. What brought us together was some ferociously honest writing about alcoholism, and what held us together for years and years was a mutual struggle with various demons. He always wrote about them better than I did. Or so I always thought.

I never knew Glen in the usual sense. I never saw his face. I had heard his voice a number of times, most memorably when he read his Getting Sober and Staying Sober pieces on CBC Radio’s Morningside. I sensed straight-from-the-shoulder directness and convoluted complexity in one person. This man was in pain, and so eerily distanced from the pain that he could write about it in prose that shimmered and shocked and stung. His writer's mind was so alive and focussed as to be almost crystalline, whereas the rest of him seemed to be slouching towards oblivion.

Sometime during his short tenure on Morningside, I began to write to Glen Allen - this guy just had a magical way with words, and seemed like a genuine (and pain-ridden, and large-hearted) human soul. I just had to get in touch with him. I was delighted to get responses, brief at first, then longer and longer, and over time we developed a sort of relationship through the mail.

This was in the days of real letters on paper, written by hand, and I always delighted in his vital and elegant script, even if it deteriorated pretty badly towards the end. Often he’d write on beautiful blank cards, and I have one in front of me now, gorgeous sprays of crimson and gold called Flowers for Lord Buddha.

I think my letters must have gone on and on. I could hardly help myself, in those days, since I had no idea what was wrong with me and why I could not settle myself the way everyone else seemed to. But Glen had the same square-peg syndrome, which in his case registered as endearing eccentricity.

He had a black lady cat named Imelda (I can’t think of a better cat name, can you?) He was concerned about his future once, and instead of seeing an investment broker or a psychiatrist, consulted a psychic in the backwoods of New Brunswick. When asked to be a speaker at an AA meeting, he told me how he had shared his “experience (long), strength (not much), and hope (I’m going to hang on if it kills me)”.

Ten years is a long time, ten birthdays, ten Christmases, ten Easters. What did we write about? I can barely bring myself to open the file folder that holds all his letters, still preserved and precious to me. The stark end of his life has made it impossible But I know we wrote about recovery: from alcoholism (we were both afflicted, and though his sobriety was patchy at best, he genuinely loved AA and treated it with the greatest reverence in his writing), from our parents (both of us had grown up with oppressive, cuttingly sarcastic fathers who withheld affection unless our performance in life was perfect: meaning we were never loved at all), and the worst thing of all, depression, the thousand-pound rock that weighs on the sensitive soul and destroys pleasure and joy and love.

Both of us had bench-pressed thousands of pounds over the years, and though he told me his official diagnosis was manic-depression, now rather slickly called "bipolar disorder", I did not realize we shared the same affliction until this past spring, when I experienced what is delicately referred to as an “episode”.

I thought then of Glen, wondered where he was, how he was doing. It wasn't the first time. Wasn't even the twentieth. We wrote to each other for an amazing length of time, given the fact that Glen pulled up stakes and moved again, and again, and again, afflicted with terminal restlessness, an attempt to outrun his own pain. But in 1996, I finally lost the thread. I tried and tried. I even e-mailed his brother Gene, but got no answer. The trail was cold, and I had to surrender him to fate or the angels.

When I read his obituary, accompanied by a picture of Glen looking like a mere boy, sweet and shy, someone who just called out to be loved, I was barely out of my own thrashing battle, still trying to figure out what the hell happened to me, how the genie had exploded out of the bottle and derailed my life. But I kept thinking: Glen would know. He'd know just what to say to me, he'd know how to spread balm very gently on the raw wound of my mind. Like a spiritual sherpa, he'd been there before me, braved the elements and somehow survived it all.

Until now. When I read of the way he died, frozen to death like a homeless person (those souls he so identified with and wrote about with such compassion), with no one to hold him as the life ebbed out of him, I wanted to scream at the injustice of it all: at the medical community's complete inability to help such a large-hearted, lavishly gifted human being; at the gap between Glen and his loved ones (there was no doubt he loved them, but something always got in the way), at the grim, fearful, love-deprived boyhood that left scars on him, and in him, that would never be healed.
I did take out the folder, and looked at his dear, graceful handwriting, but haven't read the letters yet. I had thought of writing a piece about him, a sort of tribute to him quoting his witty and insightful prose, but I knew no one would really get it. When I think of him, which is often, tears well up, and I just want my funny, sardonic, gentle, wounded, wonderful brother back.

There is a song from the 70s by a group called Bread that I keep hearing in my mind. It has a haunting lyric that is like an impressionist painting of Glen's life:

"For a love that wouldn't bloom,
For the hearts that never played in tune.
Like a lovely melody that everyone can sing,
Take away the words that rhyme, it doesn't mean a thing."

The words seem to make a melody of themselves: I think I knew his name. I never knew him, but I loved him just the same. Wish that I had found the way, and the reasons that would make him stay.

But he couldn't stay; the pain was too great, the loneliness had hollowed him out, and the demons that screamed inside his skull had to be silenced once and for all. Such a person, making an intentional exit, is often described as "finally being at peace".

I think it goes beyond that. I think he is everywhere. I know he hangs around here, a warm spot in the room, a kind of disembodied smile, and I don't want him to go.

We will remember

The somnambulist

One of my fave-fave ads. Took me 2 years to find it.

Baby, it's not your sleigh ride

Don't know what it is, but me likes.

Used in an ad for, I think, Sear's, a few years back.

Don't say there's no original Xmas music.

This might even work!

A while ago I discovered, to my utter dismay, that the domain name for my web site had been stolen by a Japanese shoe company. (No, I'm not kidding.) I had gotten one of those renewal notices in the mail (!) that I assumed was, like 95% of them, phony, so I didn't do anything about it. I knew the site still existed, but didn't know how to access it.

Then I blundered on to these links! They seem to work. Perhaps you need only one of them, but just in case. . .

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/mallory.htm

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

(Is this a "sagn"? Is my wretched luck about to turn? Stay tuned!!)

Wonderful, but confused: It's a Wonderful Life, Part II

OK, I don't exactly expect you to read all this stuff. Most movies have little inconsistencies that only the most OCD-infested person would notice. We're willing to go along with the sleight-of-hand that is the movie world.

But it does seem that there's an unusual amount of hokery, or maybe plain sloppiness, in this classic film. No one else has noticed Beulah Bondi's amazing disappearing act, but when the same woman walks by on the street five times in thirty seconds. . . you've got to wonder what's going on.

Soooooo. . . let's play Spot the Capra Gaffes!

Continuity: Ol' Man Gower's cigar disappears when he sends young George to deliver a prescription.

Continuity: Just before George speaks to Harry on the phone, George removes a wreath from his arm and places it on a table. The wreath immediately reappears on his arm.

Continuity: George's pipe disappears when talking to Violet in his office.

Continuity: George and Clarence swap sides as they are thrown out of Nick's.

Audio/visual unsynchronized: George jumps into the river to save Clarence. As he is rescuing him Clarence is screaming "help" but his mouth is not moving.

Continuity: After George storms out of Uncle Billy's house, Uncle Billy lays his head on his arms. At first he has his arms crossed right over left, then immediately they are crossed left over right.
Continuity: When George and Clarence are drying off in the bridge keeper's shack the postcard hanging by the thermometer on the wall, next to the door repeatedly disappears and reappears between shots. When Mr. Potter offers George a job, the chain on the the skull and chain on Mr. Potter's desk changes positions repeatedly between shots.

Continuity: When everyone is jumping into the pool during the dance, the same person jumps in twice.

Continuity: As George approaches Bert and Ernie by Ernie's taxi, and then all three ogle Violet as she walks down the street, the same woman in a print dress, holding the brim of her hat, walks by five times in 30 seconds.

Continuity: As Violet walks away from George, Ernie, and Bert, Ernie watches her out the window of his taxi. He stops watching and moves away from the window. In the next shot, he is watching from the window again.

Continuity: Snow on Ernie's taxi disappears and reappears when arriving at George's dilapidated house.

Revealing mistakes: When Mary (Donna Reed) throws her rock at an upstairs window of the dilapidated old house, the rock disappears a split-second after leaving her hand, and then reappears in the distance just before crashing through the glass. The roof of the house was a matte painting, added after principal photography by the visual effects department. When Ms Reed threw her rock (and it was her throwing it, not a stand-in), the arc of its flight was a bit too high, and it crossed the matte line for most of it's travel. Consequently, it was covered up by the painting, which was added later. Appartently the live-action crew did not notice the potential problem when filming the shot.

Continuity: As George and Mary prepare to drive Martini's family to their new home, Mary (in a close up) is holding the goat's horn/antler. The scene cuts to an extreme long shot in which her hand is nowhere near the goat.

Continuity: When George wanders across the street (soon to be joined by Violet), the man approaching him with the pipe suddenly becomes a woman.

Continuity: After Clarence disappears while being wrestled by Bert the Cop, you can see the shadow of Ernie the Cabdriver, shaking his finger. However, when the camera shows Ernie, he has both hands on the tree, and then he begins to shake his finger.

Continuity: During the run inside the Building & Loan, the hat changes position on the coat stand outside George's office.

Continuity: A hat being held by someone donating money in the Bailey house first has a little snow then a lot of snow then no snow.

Continuity: Alignment of George's car when it hits the tree

Continuity: Standing position of Potter's bodyguard when Potter talks to Peter Bailey at the Building & Loan.

Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Mary and George are walking down the street after the dance, she asks him, "Well, why don't you say it?" The next shot George is heard saying, "I don't know. Maybe I will say it," but his mouth is not moving at all.

Continuity: When George arrives at home and finds Mary lying there, he puts his right hand on her right hand and kisses her. Next shot he is caressing her head with his right hand.

Continuity: When George invites Carter to come in and follows him, he is holding the pipe with his left hand. But in the shot after someone asks him about hang up the phone, he appears with the pipe in his right hand.

Continuity: When George crashes his car into the tree, there's not much snow on it, when he gets out of the car to have a look at the damage, there's lots of snow on the car

Continuity: When George and Mary are throwing rocks at the dilapidated house on the way home from the dance, when George throw his rock, the window that Mary is supposed to throw a rock at is missing. Then when Mary gets ready to throw her rock the window is there.

Anachronisms: Young George Bailey is shown working in a drugstore in 1919, but he's standing next to a Coca-Cola Silhouette Girl Thermometer which wasn't produced until 1938.

Continuity: When George visits his father in his office and finds him arguing with Potter, his father is standing behind his desk talking to Potter. There is a cut away form this but upon return George's father is now on the same side of the desk as Potter.

Revealing mistakes: In the scene where George saves Clarence on the bridge (or Clarence saved him), he is seen to be visibly sweating even though it is supposedly winter. This is because the scene was shot in warm weather.

Factual errors: 1919: No National Geographic Magazine mentions "Fiji" and "coconuts" in the same subject.

Errors in geography: At the scene showing the new houses at Bailey Park, California hills are visible beyond the houses. The film is set in New York state, which only has much gentler, rolling hills.

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When George Bailey is arguing with Mr. Potter in the board room after Peter Bailey's death, George says to Potter: "What'd you say just a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home." But Mr. Potter never said this line.

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): The medal is frequently, albeit incorrectly, called the Congressional Medal of Honor, stemming from its award by the Department of Defense "in the name of Congress". It is correctly the "Medal of Honor".

Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): At one point George (James Stewart) calls Violet (Gloria Grahame), Gloria.

Continuity: When Mary puts on "Buffalo Gals" on the phonograph, she starts a ten-inch, yellow-labeled record, but in the next shot, a dark-labeled record is playing. Also, when Mary breaks the record after the conversation with George, she breaks a twelve-inch, yellow-labeled record instead of the original ten-inch record.

Revealing mistakes: In the drugstore when Mary leans over the counter to whisper in George's ear, a piece of tape suddenly appears on the edge of the counter between George's and Mary's heads. This was most likely done as a reference mark for the young actors so the focus puller could accurately pull focus.

Plot holes: When George and Clarence go looking for his car which he had run into the tree, the guy George is talking to about the car and the man's tree smells his breath and says "that must have been those two other trees" implying that George's breath smelled of alcohol and the man thought George was drunk. But if George had indeed not been born, he would never have been at Martini's before that and had any alcohol at all. And this was before he and Clarence went back to Martini's so there couldn't have been any scent of alcohol on George's breath.

Revealing mistakes: James Stewart's toupee' falls off after he and Donna Reed fall into the pool during the Charleston contest.

Plot holes: When George goes to his Mother's house and she doesn't know him, he asks about her Brother, Billy. If Uncle Billy is his Mother's brother, why is his last name Bailey?

(Incredibly, there are more, but they're listed under "spoilers". I wouldn't want to give anything away!)