Summer Solsitce 2008

Bright red cardinals engage gray and white mockingbirds in a territorial war, each flicking from tree to wire, singing out their borders with madrigals of battle. A colony of jays erupts in a riot of shrieking blue until a vestal white egret stalks innocently from their lair. Ospreys haunt an aerial highway concealed below a canopy of adjacent trees and homes as they hunt the margins between more bountiful lakes. A dusky heron stands in water as still as the reeds concealing him while fingerling fish dart between his legs unaware of the danger until his yellow bill flashes like lightning from a clear, blue sky.

An opalescent halo shines through brush-stroke clouds, masking yet defining the sun reflected on the water like a sheet of hammered gold, lighting the hazy horizon like a candle in the fog. As the neon mist disperses, the sun sets a bush ablaze in the spaces between its leaves, like an omen or promise. Or a voice.

The full moon precedes the solstice by two full nights, a waning prophecy diffusing the shadows with its soft, continuous light.

A night breeze climbs a spider strand in a shaft of reflected light, like a violin being tuned to the perfect pitch of the starry sky. A tandem of creeping meteors tracks across the darkness, watchfires from distant outposts, flickering reminders that our farthest colonies remain intact.

A pair of crows disrupts the moonlight, the precursors to a murder, large, indigo and iridescent. One splashes in the stone basin while her mate picks at the lavender flowers of the myrtle to which it's chained. Thought and Memory, All Father's ever present eyes and ears, taunting me, laughing at my troubles. I echo their laughter back at them, the mingled sound of joy combating the sorrows of this life.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Unseen Colonies

When I was in high school, I used to eat lunch outside the cafeteria. At the time I attended, Rockledge High was one of the older schools in the county. Many if not most of the other schools had been modernized and updated, but not this one. There had been additions but they were a somewhat haphazard collection of improvements that had grown organically based on the needs of the time, like a nest or hive, rather than having the appearance of a pre-planned, educational complex.

As a result, around the steps to the cafeteria concrete slabs had been poured well after the building foundation had been laid. Looking at it, you would assume that there had originally been a walkway from the open-air halls to the steps of the cafeteria, and then later, as more space was needed, someone paved over the open ground so that students could eat outside.

As you know, concrete is often poured within a wooden framework, a framework that building contractors, especially ones employed by the county, don't always remove. You occasionally see a sidewalk with a section of one by two embedded in it. Or, more accurately, you see where that one by two used to be. In Florida, exposed wood doesn't last very long with the humidity and high insect activity. Ours is a prehistoric land ruled by reptiles and insects which humans have only recently begun to colonize in significant numbers with the advent of controlled environment technology, which down here we call AC.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the contractors did a perfectly acceptable job according to the local standards in putting down these slabs before time and gravity weighed upon them as they lean heavily upon all the Ozymandian constructs of man.

Either way, running from the corner of the building to the steps themselves, a gap blossomed from the thickness of a sheet of heavy construction paper to perhaps half an inch, so that either the patio or the building now seemed slightly askew. I'm not sure how the foundation of this building was constructed. Many older buildings in Florida have crawlspaces built beneath them. Though I don't believe that this one did, it definitely was no longer completely married to the ground.

Occasionally, I would sit on the steps waiting for the cafeteria to open. Not being much of a social creature, I tended to focus more on the world around me than on my fellow students. Looking down one day, I noticed that crack just below the brick facade where the foundation met the newer concrete. I also noticed that a darkness seemed to cling to it, making it appear deeper than just a gap between mismatched planes. When pale concrete reflects the bright Florida sun, there are tricks of light and shadow that can make you doubt what you think you really see.

A moment later, I noticed movement, the tentative exploration of a pair of antennae, just one at first. Any loose pebble sent skittering their way brought increased activity and more emerged. Not too far, not far enough to see the heads those antennae were attached to. But far enough that they could feel along the first fraction of an inch of concrete to see if any scrap of sustenance had dropped within reach. If a shadow fell across the opening, they went into full retreat. Should any gobbet or crumb drop near their entrance, a lone scavenger would dart out to retrieve it, while increased numbers crowded around in case more manna descended from the sky. That assemblage would grow to tens, then dozens, perhaps even hundreds. A forest sprouted up and down that tiny opening, masking the bodies one atop another, each beside or beneath a third, a sea of cilia like you might see under a microscope flagellating that half an inch of open ground before the entrance to their delve.

I can only imagine the immense number of creatures that eked out their existence beneath that foundation. An entire settlement of hundreds if not thousands occupying a warren they had expanded from what they saw as a natural cave, living on the detritus our microcosmic community had left behind. I can still imagine the night when they felt safe and comfortable enough to emerge and descend upon our leavings.

I don't really hold much against that colony. They were industrious creatures doing what needed to be done in order to survive, gathering food, excavating living space, feeding and raising their young.

Insects outnumber us by at least a trillion to one on this planet. Their populations grow as they live off our society's castoffs. Were we to disappear, they would inherit our planet in greater numbers than we can comprehend, even after our absence took its toll on the species most dependent on our sumptuously wasteful way of life. Recent studies at the University of Florida have found that cockroaches exhibit what is known as emergent behavior, that they show tendencies to make complex, group-based decisions. In other words, the beginnings of a hive mind.

In the opening scene of Blue Velvet, a 1986 movie directed by David Lynch, the camera zooms into an object on a well-trimmed lawn that turns out to be a human ear bereft of its owner. The camera then focuses through that ear and into the ground itself where it finds a number of insects moving through the earth and fighting one other. That scene is a metaphor for an unseen world, one we rarely witness, representing life in the margins just beyond our sight.

Our world is alive with such unseen colonies that few of us take the time to notice. Sometimes, those colonies wear human faces, and we willfully blind ourselves to their existence, much to our disgrace.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Fire and Illusion

As many of you know, Karen and I are taking a World Religions course this summer at our local community college. As I was reading the chapter on Buddhism in the textbook, specifically reading about the concept of nirvana or spiritual liberation from suffering and desire, I was reminded of a story that a friend of mine told me several years ago. What follows is the story as he related it to me, filtered through my imperfect memory. I have lost touch with him, so can't verify the details. It is his story, one I've borrowed for your entertainment. To the best of my knowledge it is true. Though it is not an original creation, I hope you enjoy it nonetheless.

First, I have to give you a sketch of my friend Duncan. He's about average height and build with long, wavy, medium brown hair pulled into a ponytail that falls midway down his back, and has piercing jade green eyes. He has what might be a Sanskrit character tattooed on his arm. He is the very picture of a child of 60's hippie parents, ones who never moved away from the commune in the hills of northern California. He has that totally free and unencumbered attitude toward life that you might associate with that movement. He would have been in his early twenties at the time of this story.

One summer between school semesters in the early nineties, Duncan decided he would travel to India and Nepal. Or maybe he took a leave of absence from work. I don't quite remember. Either way, he had always wanted to see both countries and had saved enough money to hike around for a number of weeks, camping, staying in youth hostels or anywhere that would put him up for relatively little money.

While exploring the Indian countryside, he managed to contract scarlet fever, a rather nasty infection that, as its name implies, is accompanied by a high fever, in the 100-104 degree Fahrenheit range. When he started feeling really off and knew something was very wrong, he began asking people in the village he was passing through about a doctor. Each person he spoke with just pointed him toward what appeared to be an abandoned Buddhist monastery up on a hill. Feeling sicker and sicker, he soon gave up asking, thinking they hadn't understood his question. He just stumbled toward where they had pointed, though he didn't remember actually getting there.

For the next several days, he was in and out of lucidity in the throes of febricity. If you've ever had a fever of 102 or higher, you know how it is. Reality becomes soft and mutable. The difference between dreams and waking blurs until the boundary no longer exists. He didn't know how much time had passed. He didn't even know where he was. All he knew was that periodically, someone raised his head to help him sip a little water, and dabbed his head with a cool cloth, which he found both soothing and comforting.

The next thing he remembered was waking up on a pallet, drenched in sweat, on the floor of a small, simple, stone cell. It was mostly dark inside, with just a few rays of light passing through the slats of the primitive, wooden door. He could see his backpack in the corner, unopened and undisturbed, along with a bowl of water on the floor beside him. He drank that down in one continuous gulp and felt much more lucid than he had since he'd arrived. After sitting up a moment and assessing, he decided he was ok to stand. He also discovered he was hungry, and extremely curious about where he was. So, he got up, found he was still mostly steady and went outside.

He emerged to find himself on the grounds of a rather ancient Buddhist temple and monastery. It was evening and there was no one in sight. There weren't even sounds to indicate anyone might be nearby. Somewhat in awe of the beauty of the place, he started wandering, looking for someone, anyone to tell him where he was and how long he had been there. After a few minutes completely alone in this huge, stone complex, he stumbled across a young novice in orange or scarlet robes, only a few years younger than himself. The young man gestured to him and said, "Come, you must see the master. He wanted to speak with you as soon as you were up. Come, come." Not sure what else to do, Duncan followed the brightly robed youth as he navigated the shadows among the warrens of the empty grounds.

Eventually, they entered a large common room with slightly more modern appointments where all the novices were gathered watching television. Yes, television. You have to remember that in Asia and India many boys and girls enter monastic life at a very early age. Most don't necessarily do so voluntarily. It is often a decision their families make for them for one reason or another.

So here are all these brightly robed boys and young men, ranging in age from ten to sixteen, gathered around a television, watching, of all things, the satellite broadcast of MTV Asia. And not just anything on MTV Asia, they are watching the video to "Smells like Teen Spirit" by the Seattle grunge band Nirvana, which was quite popular at that time. The older monks are also in the room, but they were all studiously pretending the television did not exist, just as they thought good Buddhist monks should. All except the oldest monk. He seemed to be staring at the television, captivated by it as though he was a small child.

He noticed Duncan and said, "Ah, good, you are awake. Come, sit, sit." Duncan, his energy pretty much drained by the trip from the cell, sat down while one of the novices went off to get him some water and hot broth. While Duncan sat there no longer feeling particularly steady, the master went back to staring at video. After several days with a fever and no food, Duncan didn't feel completely connected to reality at this point and found the scene of a monastery of Buddhist monks watching MTV all too surreal. But he sat and watched, not having the energy to do much else.

Emboldened by Duncan's presence, the novices started giving the old master a hard time about watching the television. "No," he said in a single, clipped syllable. With sidelong glances toward Duncan, they persisted. Come on, admit it, you are watching the television. "No," he repeated, but he didn't stop staring at it. You can admit it to us, they chided, you are actually enjoying it. "No," he answered firmly. But he kept staring. Undaunted, the novices continued. You're watching the girls in the video and you are enjoying it. We know. We can tell. "No," the venerable monk insisted. Then he slowly turned Duncan as if only he would understand. "It is all fire," he said, passing his hands in front of him toward the television screen, "Fire and illusion."

All the novices fell silent, knowing their enlightened master had just shared with them the true meaning of nirvana.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Beltane 2008

A spot of light in one corner of the window oozes across the bone white curtains, staining them the color of liquid honey. Amber slowly pales to sunshine yellow then to white before it fades into dappled gray as it hides behind the bright green veil of spring.

Sunset bracketed by folded wings with filigrees of light, traceries of cloud, like Icarus descending in fire behind a copse of trees, burning against their matchstick shadows, observed only because it's partially obscured.

Herons and egrets lazily chase sunrise then sunset in silhouette. Do they notice the beauty beyond their destination on these daily migrations? Or do they, like us, transit the sky blindly, thinking only of work and home, past and future, never truly living in the present?

Beltane, the pastoral transition from spring leas to summer grazing. Tonight, we light the purifying bonfires in a ritual celebrating our survival through the spring. The flames flicker across still pools of night, encouraging the rebirth of our dead. As numerous as fireflies on a summer's eve, their souls are like tiny echoes of the distant fires reflected in the water, waiting only for us to light the candles that eventually will guide them home.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Ghost

Many cultures believe that a soul remains in the area of its life for three days after death, sometimes longer, finishing the details of its life, checking on the loved ones it left behind. During that time, you must do everything in your power to appease that spirit, or confuse it in some traditions so that it doesn't wreak havoc upon you from the other side. In many cultures, that handful of days is a narrow window to communicate with the dead, to wish them well before they begin their journey, to say the things you forgot to say while they were still a part of your world.
But in most folklore, especially Eastern European folklore, ghosts and spirits are cunning and opportunistic. They attend the times when our eyes most deceive us, the shadowy light of dawn and dusk. They can appear as corporeal beings, creatures that interact and seem real in every sense of the word. That is part of their disguise and deception. You must be careful as you never know what spirit you're dealing with. A spirit you think may be a loved one could in truth be a local godling or demon wanting to ingratiate itself to you for its own purposes. Desire and a willingness to believe what you see are what make you vulnerable.
Karen and I went out to the lake in the park to watch the sunset tonight. In the twilight on our way home, a black cat sat astride our path, one we'd never seen before. He watched us, unfazed by our approach. His eyes almost glowed against the dark fur of his narrow face like topaz jewels backlit in a stained-glass panel, like the one Karen made me of Smoke many years ago.
As we got nearer, he started to leave, then stopped and looked at us again. And cried, like an infant, or a Siamese. We squatted down and held out our hands to show we were harmless as we know to do with strange cats. He approached cautiously, sensing we were safe, still crying intermittently. He sniffed our hands. Karen petted him. I gently stroked his side. He was a young, unneutered male with well-groomed fur that wasn't coarse like it gets when a cat lives its life outside. Not thin like he was wild, but no sign of a collar. Definitely comfortable with people.
But was he real, or a ghost? Perhaps he was a messenger carrying news from the other side, or relaying what he saw the other way. Karen is convinced he was real, that he had substance. I'm not as certain. My people believe that spirits inhabit every stone and tree, every mountain and river. Animals can be omens, good or bad, couriers from another world to remind us of things we've forgotten, or to warn us of things we have not yet seen. Sometimes these things are only revealed in time. Maybe he was just a construct of my own desire. Or just a friendly black cat with a few white guard hairs that coincidentally lived nearby. It's hard to know.
We all see the world in different ways. Most days, I'm not quite sure if I should completely believe my eyes. And, some days, I wish I could.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Scars

I am still reminiscing, I'm not sure why. Perhaps because spring has wakened the beast within enough to yawn and scratch its hairy hide, wondering what it was doing before the long night descended, brooding as Siegfried's Funeral March plays across its mind.

I was watching "The Deadliest Catch" the other night. It's a show on Discovery about crab fishermen in Alaska in case you've never seen it. At the beginning of the episode, they were talking to one of the captains who had his son on board for the season as a kind of apprentice. This kid was maybe 18. The captain was telling the story of when his son was younger and wanted to prove how tough he was. In the local bars there is a ritual between men where they lay their forearms together and drop a lit cigarette between them. The one who flinches first loses. So that's what this man did with his son. The father flinched first. He said that's when he knew the kid was something special. They both showed the scars to prove it.

I've been thinking about that description a lot since I heard it. The image disturbed me. If your child were to show up at school with a burn like that in Florida, I'm pretty sure you'd have some explaining to do or be up for long conversation with DCF if they were paying attention. That was the first thought that sprang to mind.

But I'm not usually content with the quickest and easiest answer. I felt conflicted, though I couldn't say why. So I thought about it longer. These crab fishermen are tough. I think they have to be to do their jobs in such extreme conditions. The father was obviously proud of his son for besting him at his own game. One way to look at it was that the father was preparing his son for the world he would inherit if he followed in his footsteps. I'm sure the father also looked at it as something voluntary, something that his son had chosen to do. But then, was there some level of coercion in their family dynamic that made the son feel he had to prove himself to his father in that way? Or had he picked it up as a societal norm from the behavior of those around him? I wasn't sure.

Intellectually, I understand the purpose of such rituals. The son couldn't be seen as weak or a quitter or he would never gain the respect of the men he needed to succeed in his father's business. As an apprentice, he had to prove himself to them every day for a long time. Part of that has a practical side. These men's lives depend on each other every day at sea for weeks at a time where no other help is likely to be forthcoming. Bering's sea, like the North plied by his ancestors, is harsh and unforgiving. Men die out there every year. The crews need to know that a perspective addition will watch their backs when conditions are at their worst. It's like basic training in the military: it's better to know whether someone is likely to wash out before you get to combat.

Part of my conflict is that I see many of these rituals as unnecessary, overgrown boys playing at war without ever having experienced one. There is nothing like a mixture of boredom, pressure and a harsh environment to bring out the worst in men. I think we as a gender revel in making each other's lives miserable. Sometimes I think it's the only way we can feel better about our own situations. And shut each other up.

I also know that these rituals can only tell you so much. Until a person is in a critical situation, you really have no idea how they'll react. Seemingly brave men break and cower under fire, while skittish, nebbish types sometimes transform into lions that will eat their own young. You never know until someone points a pistol at your face and is prepared to pull the trigger. That is the harsh reality of this life.

Don't get me wrong; I respect these men. My great-grandfather was shipwrecked twice in the North Atlantic while he served in Sweden's merchant marine. The second time, he quit the sea and settled here, one of only a handful of survivors. My father rode submarines while earning a living as a Lockheed engineer. He knew people aboard the Scorpion and the Thresher when they went down. As a Raytheon contractor, I spent a few weeks at sea on Navy cruisers, including skirting a hurricane on a run from Jacksonville to Norfolk, so I think I understand a little. In college I was pulled from the ocean when our rented boat sank off the Keys out of sight of land. I was the one swimming after the lifejackets that were floating away and throwing them back to the people who hadn't put them on. At least the water off Florida is warm, and we were rescued before we had to stay the night.

Part of my problem is that I never thought I had to prove myself to anyone but me. I don't do fraternities or initiations. I don't do hazing, nor do I tolerate it being done when I have a say. I don't get sucked into stupid actions on a dare. I see such things as pointless and a general waste of energy better spent on getting a job done. If you're competent, you have nothing you need to prove.

It's not that I don't do stupid things. I do. My wife can attest to one involving alcohol, a disparaging remark directed at a female friend, and a challenge to defend her honor that involved a four-story climb in the dark. Since my adversary chose the contest, he had to respect me more when he lost and correct his behavior at least within earshot.

And I'm not afraid to test my limits. Ask Karen about another climb in the dark, this one up a radio tower stone cold sober without a safety line because I wondered if I could. It was worth it if only for the view from horizon to horizon while swaying in the breeze. As someone smarter than me once said, you can't fix stupid.

I do what I do for my own reasons, not to prove myself to others. And I hate giving away any indication of how seriously someone might need to take me. I'd rather have them underestimate me. Perhaps that's because I never developed an abiding sense of trust in people, of being able to rely on them. I have a deeply ingrained self-reliant streak, much to my detriment at times. I don't ask for help doing things that I can do myself. Typical frontier thinking. Lone wolf behavior.

Though I do understand the value of scars. I used to be able to recount the story behind most of the ones I carry across my body. The one where I accidentally gouged my thumb with a pocketknife while whittling. The one where I tried to slice off a knuckle when I slipped with an X-acto and band-aided the flap back on until it healed. The one on my back where a surgeon removed an aberrant cyst. The pattern across my side where he took out my gallbladder. The one on my shin beneath which the bone was cracked and I never realized it. The one where my knee was wired back together. The one on my abdomen that corrected the defect that tried to kill me as an infant. That doesn't count the obvious signs of a thrice-broken nose, the fractured collarbone, the crooked, unset toes and the bevy of invisible concussions.

Then, there is a set of four scars running across my left forearm just below the elbow. I am frequently asked about them, especially when I go to give blood. My usual snide answer is that I cut myself shaving. Or, if I'm in tolerant mood, I'll say that I got them once while camping. Both are true, though technically I wasn't shaving at the time. Most people think a feral cat or a raccoon put them there. The truth is that I carved the first three on a vision quest in the mountains of North Carolina. The fourth I added a few years later.

Each has a name, a real person I associated with an invisible scar as I laid the real one down. People and events I wanted to remember, not that I was likely to forget. One tried to kill me, while another only beat me half to death, though I don't remember much about the incident. The third, well, he believes I am still unproven, my mettle still untested even after he left me with the first two.

For a time, there was only the triad. Then I met a person whose actions against someone I loved required an addition. That one is the widest, the person whose betrayal and lack of contrition remain unforgiven. Harsh, but transforming the trio to a quartet beat the alternative at the time.

Because of the events behind these scars, I guess I never felt the need for any rite of passage to predict whether I'd survive. Most of the rituals people cling to in our modern world strike me as antiquated or contrived. Perhaps I should remember that most people haven't had the diverse experiences I have. Or maybe I'm misremembering, and have retold these tales until they became integrated into the persona I've constructed around myself like a personal mythology. Something to warn others off like a violin on the back of a spider, or a rattle on the tail of a snake. Brightly colored totems indicating danger.

Either way, I guess if I didn't feel the need to prove something, I'd never send this message. The handful of guys who read it will likely chuckle at my braggadocio, thinking, yeah, I could take him, while all the women are just shaking their heads. Men and their narcissistic scars.

None of which settles the original question of right and wrong in my mind. I'm not sure it's an absolute in this case. It's easy to think that everyone's life should reflect our own in all places at all times. We forget that sometimes things are the way they are for a reason, however flawed that reasoning might be. It always helps me to try on those boots and walk around a bit before I get too judgmental.

Ok, my inner beast might have gotten a little cranky from a serious case of testosterone poisoning. I think I should put it down for a nap. Perhaps it will be soothed by the sound of Wagner's adaptation of Nibelungen echoing in my ears.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Patience

And now a peek behind the veil at the mind that weaves its insanity into words.

When I was sixteen, I lived with my father for several months in Fernandina Beach. For those who have never been there, it's a small town just north of Jacksonville. It's an odd mix of rural Florida and ocean-side honky-tonk. If you've ever seen the movie "Sunshine State" you'll know exactly what I'm talking about as it was filmed there and captures the place completely.

Nestled among the bars and diners and nautical-themed tourist shops on the main street was a small bookstore. When I say small, I mean basically the size of a single suite in a late '70's strip mall, though like all the historic downtown it maintained a classic brick facade. Their selection was quite limited, catering mostly to the tourist crowd. It might not even have been exclusively a bookstore, but a newsstand that carried a few shelves of books, like you would see in grocery or a pharmacy. All their books faced front cover out; that's how few they had. But being a voracious reader, I haunted the place in search of fresh paper.

One day I ran across a fantasy novel by an author I'd never heard of. It was sitting on the lowest shelf beside two or three action titles. "All Darkness Met" by Glen Cook. The cover art included a man with a sword and shield wearing chain mail and a winged helmet, a scantily clad woman, a sorcerer casting a spell and a tiger. I mean, how much cooler could it get? I skimmed the short description on the back cover and decided it might be worth a read.

Now you have to remember that back then, a sixteen year-old in a bookstore wasn't given a lot of time to make a decision. Unlike in Borders or Barnes and Noble today, reading more than the back cover or hanging around for longer than a few minutes without buying something was frowned upon, literally. The proprietor, a guy probably just over my age now, watched me with the eyes of a shepherd zealously guarding his flock against perceived wolves like me. No one, especially a teenager he didn't recognize, was going to nick even a tuft of wool, let alone a whole lamb-chop, not with him on watch. So I scooped up the book, laid down my dollar ninety-five plus tax, and left.

Again, unlike modern bookstores, in this kind of shop at this time everything was pretty much a final sale. It was best to choose wisely, as they didn't accept returns. At that point in my life, two plus bucks was a considerable entertainment investment. My allowance was $5 which I needed to cover all the other necessities of teenage life: food, movies, dates, games, you know, the essentials. I also had to use that money to fuel my father's 1970-something Buick land-ark that got single digits to the gallon if I wanted to drive the five miles back and forth to town and see my friends. Gas was cheaper then, but not that cheap. This was just beyond the peak of the second oil crisis.

Imagine my dismay when I picked up the book that night and noticed it was the third in a trilogy. It was right there on the cover, hiding in plain sight, overlooked in my nervous haste under the proprietor's scrutinous eye. As soon as I could, I returned to the store on the off-hand chance that they had the first book of the series. No such luck. Even if they had, I'm not sure I would have bought it right then. I'd already dropped two dollars and change into the unknown. What if it wasn't any good?

So here I was, stuck with a book I wasn't sure what to do with in the wilds of Nassau County where this bookshop was considered to be the height of civilization. Even the few times my father and stepmother made the trek into Jacksonville, bookstores weren't exactly high on the list of their shopping priorities. What to do, what to do?

I decided I would read the first twenty pages to see if they were any good. If they weren't, I hadn't lost any more than if I'd bought the first in the series and found it disappointing. If the short sample of this book was decent, I would know to look for the previous two. I figured twenty pages was enough to get a sense of the writing without ruining whatever story came before it. Sixteen year-old thinking.

I read that first score of pages the next night, and then just a few more, thoroughly enjoying every one. This was a fantasy novel unlike any I'd read before, edgy sword and sorcery with gritty characters who acted like they might in real life rather than as if they inhabited Tolkien's Middle Earth. It took effort, but I managed to close the cover after reading just two chapters. I resolved right then that I would wait to finish this novel until I found the other two. I mean, how hard could that be? If the third book was popular enough to find its way into a downtown bookstand through the time-warp that was Fernandina Beach, the first two had to be falling off the shelves of Waldenbooks in Merritt Square Mall. Right?

Wrong. The inside cover listed the publisher as Berkley Books, "printed by arrangement with the author." Oh, not good. Not good at all. When I returned to Merritt Square, Walden's had nothing by the Glen Cook. Even though both earlier works were listed in their tome of published fiction, they weren't titles the store could special order. But I was told at the service desk that they sometimes carried them and might get them again if the main office decided they needed another set. It happened sometimes. Just check back every now and then. Yeah, sure.

From that point onward, finding those two books became my quest. I scoured every bookstore I came across, which was no small number. I love bookstores. I still seek them out wherever I go. Small, large, new, used, it doesn't matter. Before I had access to that miracle of '70's culture called the mall, I would peruse the five and dime, the grocery and the drugstore, or any other place that carried a selection. I still do today, much to my wife's puzzlement while we're waiting for a prescription to be filled. But I've found several books that have stuck with me in such places, "Das Boot" and "The Cross of Iron" to name two, even a novelization of Shakespeare's "Henry V" once. When we vacationed in Wales two years ago, we drove half a day out of our way to explore a town that boasted thirty-six used bookstores, just to see what the English had to offer. Worth every precious pound and moment. Next time Karen will have to pry me out.

It wasn't weeks or even months before I met with success in my self-appointed task, almost right back where I started, in a bookstore in the mall. As I went through what was by then a pro forma ritual of searching for these missing titles before moving on to greener grazing, there they both were, the first with the same burgundy spine as the third, the second in a bright yellow as if emerging from a particularly vivid dream. "A Shadow of All Night Falling" and "October's Baby." They were real. They actually existed and I had found them. The manager hadn't lied; they really did sometimes randomly restock them. I snatched them up possessively and headed for the register. Within moments, both were finally mine. I started devouring the first that very night. That was two years later.

All three books were well worth the wait. They each lived up to those initial twenty-three pages, and then some. I thought they were better in many ways than the author's signature series, which I can still remember my excitement at stumbling across in a recently opened bookshop while I was in college. Perhaps I liked this first set better because I'd had years to anticipate reading them, my appetite whetted by just that one brief taste. As with many experiences in life, some of the best get even better with anticipation. Just ask your partner.

Some people would say I am not a patient man. Most days, I'm not. I don't deal with frustration easily, nor do I long suffer situations I believe to be wrong. Some see that as impatient, which it is by any meaningful definition of the word. I am a person who has no problem stepping into a fight to defend another, even on a principle, even when someone isn't willing to defend themselves. A person who gets annoyed too easily when I think someone's prejudice is showing, intentionally or not, and am willing to point it out, often too sharply. A person who insists the cable company fix their signal, no matter how many annoyed phone calls I have to make, no matter how high in the organization I have to go. In these things I allow my emotions to rule me, probably to my detriment. It doesn't help that I'm a somewhat of a perfectionist, though you might not know it from reading my messages.

But I can also be long-term thinker and planner, a strategist who implements a five year plan to pay off the mortgage so I can live my dream. A person who can sometimes wait for the obnoxious neighbor to move out on his own without any push from me. A person who sometimes will find a central location to wait for someone I'm looking for to pass by rather than chasing around after them. A person who always brings a book anywhere I think I might have to wait. A seeming contradiction in nature that afflicts many people I've met in one way or another.

On days I berate myself for sending a message before a meticulous editing can catch all my errors in my excitement to share my creation, I remind myself of that time almost thirty years ago. I still have those novels, which have passed through the hands of many of my friends since then. Their spines are faded and cracked, their covers torn and taped together, their pages folded and yellowed. But they remain on my shelf as treasured keepsakes to be reread, if only to remind me of the rewards patience sometimes brings.

Ok, that's probably enough reminiscing. I should let the veil fall back into place before you discover what other type of OCD psychotic you might be dealing with here.

Thank you again for reading these messages despite my less than perfect editing. To paraphrase the iconic Alton Brown, I hope your own patience with them has sometimes been rewarded.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III