Beltane 2012 - a reading (on YouTube)
Beltane. May 1st. May Day.
When you say May Day, most American minds spring to the distress call. Some believe it evolved from the Haymarket Massacre in 1886 Chicago several days after what has become known as International Worker’s Day. Others believe that holiday arose in Communist Russia, though the Soviets only marked it, they did not create it.
In truth, the distress call (“mayday”) derives from the French “(venez) m'aider” (“come help me”) and came into use around 1927 as French desperately clung to its lifeline as the lingua franca of international commerce.
Neither is related to the older, Celtic holiday. May Day marks the end of barren winter in the northern climes of Europe. Mid-spring to some, the first day of summer to the Celts. A cross-quarter day of celebration not distress.
Normally, I would write about the green-root rather than the red-root or pan-pan meaning. Today is not a normal day. My mother is in the hospital, my father is dying, and their surrounding situations seem intent on putting the “fun” back into “dysfunctional.”
Currently, my life feels like a three-ringed circus with me cast as the clown trying to distract a runaway tiger so no one gets mauled. Or a flashback to December, 1942 (there I was in Chicago enjoying a nice game of racquetball at the university when suddenly...). Who knew that two six-month tours in the integration lab dealing with the narcissistically Cerberean egos of hardware engineers was really an Israeli-style commando simulation training me for my future?
So, for me, today is about escape. I don’t distract myself in any of the traditional Celtic ways. I don’t drink. I don’t dance. I don’t don antlers and chase maidens through the gorse and bracken by moonlight. When I have time, I read stories. More often, I sneak in a game.
Some people tell me games are a waste of time. I would ask what purpose is served by drinking? By dancing? By drama, or any other pastime? On the best of days, they make us feel good about our lives. On the worst, they anesthetize our pain.
My favorite games serve as simulations. They present problems with discrete though sometimes complex solutions rather than ones that remain intractable. Most games have preset starting points with definitive goals and objectives. They grant players a stronger measure of control than ordinary life. When we get stuck or find ourselves trapped in a dead end, we can backtrack step-by-step to where we went wrong, restart and try again. Sometimes we succeed. But runs of luck can never be discounted.
Games form one layer to the bedrock of my existence. My father had me playing chess before I turned ten. My mother taught me Spite and Malice. My grandmother cribbage. I discovered a passion for war-games and role-playing on my own. We never had a family game night. In fact, we never had much of a family night at all. Perhaps that plays a part in our ongoing angst.
In times of stress, games act as my reward. I seek them out at every opportunity. Game stores form the constellations that guide my travels, from Maryland to New England, Scotland to Seattle, the I-4 corridor to the dealers rooms at Dragon*Con, even as their individual stars wink out one by one. I can trace the stratigraphy of Sci-Fi City (nee Enterprise 1701) back through four locations. The Fantasy Factory through only three.
On our weary way home from one of several round trips to the right coast of Florida in March, we detoured through Orlando so I could pick up a war-game based on the Crusades that I had hesitated over in January. Reading new rules is a kind of meditation for me. Game tokens have become my talismans. I have more dice stashed in boxes and bags throughout the house than any sane man should. Perhaps that says something but each sight of them brings me just a tiny bit of joy.
In whatever brings you joy this Beltane, I hope your day comes up natural rather than snake eyes or midnight. As I wish you luck in yours, I hope Fortuna grants the same in mine. Regardless, the die is cast, the strategy laid out and opening moves will soon begin.
© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III
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ReplyDeleteNotes and asides:
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By the time this was posted (but not written), my mother was home from the rehabilitation center. My father’s battle with lung cancer is at the point where there is nothing else to be done medically. In just under a three-week period, we spent 11 days on the other coast broken into three separate 300-mile roundtrips to see and help my mother and my father (who are long divorced). If you’ve been wondering at my lack of productivity on stories (especially the half-completed “Terminal”), their overarching situations began to unfold in late November and early December. It seems like each time I relax and detox enough to sit down and write, another crisis arises, sometimes within minutes. I now completely understand how some people become superstitious.
I loved the terms green-root (Celtic) and red-root (labor) to explain the two etymologies of “May Day” when I ran across them. Pan-pan is another, lighter call for aid used at times in place of a full “mayday.”
On December 2, 1942 the Manhattan Project achieved the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction with CP-1 installed in the racquetball court at University of Chicago under the stands of the abandoned of Stagg Field. As an interesting side note, my grandfather played a minor role in supporting that project though not the Chicago phase of it.
According to Greek legend, Cerberus, the three-headed guardian dog of Hades, only ate live meat. The same holds for most hardware engineers in my experience.
Spite and Malice is a 2-4 player competitive solitaire-like card game played with 4+ decks of cards.
In the game of craps, an opening roll of 7 or 11 is called natural and is a winner. Snake eyes (2) and midnight (more often called boxcars, 12) are both losing opening rolls.
Fortuna is the Roman god of luck. If you want a good take on her, read the translated lyrics of “O Fortuna” from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana on wikipedia. This piece was discovered in the nineteenth century along with 200 other thirteenth century poems and songs in the library of an abbey in Bavaria. Who said monastic life was boring?
“The die is cast” is another expression of somewhat confused origins a few people’s minds. I have run across more than one who believes it has something to do with metallurgy and minting coins (a die being the blank from which coins are cast). Clearly plausible but not the well-documented etymology.
Picture notes:
ReplyDeleteKaren took this picture many years ago as we were setting up our personal website. It is the banner picture for a page called “Feel Lucky?” where we post odd and offbeat articles we run across. The dice themselves are hers, picked up one year at Dragon*Con.
Excellant article! Can hardly wait to see what you write about Mother's Day (she says with tongue in cheek) but carry on!
ReplyDeleteThanks. We'll have to see if anything strikes me.
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