Samhain 2011

Samhain 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)

Light, darkness, birth, death, each year begins with hope and ends in resignation.

The sun seeps through the clouds like a reopened wound, its watery light staining the landscape as if a thrice-washed bandage. At the edge of a shadowed wood, yellow daisies glow in the gloaming of the evening sun like a string of jack-o'-lanterns marking out the territorial margin between the land of the living and the land of the dead.

The wind whispers the names of the missing through the evergreens. Wind chimes toll a death knell for the departed. We cover their eyes for the ferryman so they can't see their destination. Into light or darkness we are unconcerned as long as they're at peace. Their cairns form the portals to the Otherworld. The moon holds a mirror to their souls.

Tonight, the glass is broken. Tonight, the dead and darkness become as one. We didn't used to fear the dead, we feared their disappointment. Like faded family portraits, ghosts were pale memories of once vibrant friends and familiars. Kobolds, goblins and Swedish tomte were once our kith and kin. In our desperate longing to reclaim them, we seek out witches, priests and necromancers to throw us winter's bone.

They cannot.

Life is a sacred gift, death a sacred mystery beyond the veil of which our mortal eyes were never meant to see.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Fall Equinox 2011

Fall Equinox - a reading (on YouTube)

At the equinox the morning light changes from summer to winter, soft, slanted and slightly shadowed. Yet deep within our concrete canyons and tamed suburban jungles, we still dream our lives away.

The white faerie stirs her cauldron beneath the Harvest Moon as blind men feed the fire that keeps the brew alive. Each lanced boil of inspiration shrouds the world in deeper poetic mystery. She reads from the Black Book Carmarthen and lulls our souls to sleep.

Adrift in her hypnagogic fog, we shout garbled messages between our ship and shore. We strain to hear the crash of waves, praying we are guided toward safe harbor rather than lured by will-o-the-wisps onto a rocky shoal.

In the parkland beyond the breakwater, trees uproot to walk and fight as men, their arms barren as their leafy armor falls away. Winter's breath strips their flesh, revealing narrow limbs that beckon like long, bony fingers in the shadows of the moon.

Along the path within that rocky wood, we find a polished pewter mirror, its surface reflecting an ever shifting triad of maiden, mother and crone. As the wind penetrates the forest, the stagnant pool ripples to life. Tiny waves of black and gray reflect the sky above. Fey voices whisper from the shadows, drink not deeply from the roadside pool. In raindrops there are wisdom, in draughts a fatal poison.

Overhead, the sky looms like scales on the belly of a great, gray snake dripping clear venom directly into the minds of its victims below. Come morning, its tears turn to shafts of silver light that pierce the Cimmerian clouds, a rain of arrows from heaven, a storm of spears from the afterlife.

We awake to find another year and a day behind us, our memories stolen by a mischievous boy who somehow infected the enchantress' womb. His contralto words echo from the dreamscape like tiny, silver bells, beautiful yet incomprehensible. We can only hope to gather them like the first fruits of the harvest, quickly capturing their luminescence before our ink darkens upon the page.

Such is the gift of Ceridwen's inspiration at the equinox, fleeting and evanescent. Enjoy her magic before the memory fades like the gloaming astride midsummer's piercing light and the deep darkness of midwinter.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Dragon*Con: The Hero Cycle

The hero cycle begins and ends in the same location, the ordinary world, your safe and happy place. Between the call to adventure and the return with the elixir, the hero is transformed. Are you beginning, ending, or beginning once again? It's hard to say. The same can be said for us at Dragon*Con each year.

For all the hectic drama leading up to it, including the day before we left, our adventure went surprisingly smoothly. No major hiccoughs or disasters, no sickness or disease. Unless you count a minor bout of chronic heat stroke, but more on that in a bit.

Because I know you are all busy people, I'll give you the thumbnail sketch up front. Five days, sixteen panels, five concerts, two concourse performances. One panel cancellation, none we walked out of, only two a little sketchy. My three top panels: The Hero's Journey (Writing), Dungeon Design 101 (complete with dire skunks) (Gaming), and 5 Lies of Creativity and How to Overcome Them (Art). Karen's Best: Live Model 1 & 2 (5 hours of drawing) (Art). The panel with the most surprising tidbit of information: Memory Training (Science) where the clinical psychologist revealed a clinically studied treatment program for memory loss resulting from breast cancer treatment (chemo-brain) that we might look into.

For merch, we walked away with two books (The Creation of Narrative in Tabletop Role-Playing Games, Xtreme Dungeon Mastery), five CDs (The Cruxshadows, Ayria, Abney Park, The Julia Dream, Siberia My Sweet), two pieces of custom jewelry (David Cain Jewelry) and an artists' colony magazine (always talk to hippies on the street). Freebies included a Dragon*Con luggage tag, a cool Dragon*Con room key-card and a Pyr Books sampler.

We left out 650 business cards across five hotels, sometimes playing a game of cat and mouse with housekeeping, sometimes on an hourly basis. I figure we had a 10-25% loss rate with the rest taken up. As always, the transparencies went first. We'll see if they generate any traffic to the sites.

Travel was fine, except for having to remove my belt before getting scanned at the airport. Though that did add to the prison-like ambiance of the adventure. We got there before noon on Thursday and stayed late enough on Monday to catch the last panels. The weather in Atlanta on the way out became a concern (tornadoes north of downtown), but for us only resulted in a ten-minute delay and a lot of turbulence on the way home.

Registration was better this year (only two and half hours in line this year, a 40% reduction from the previous two), but not quite a breeze. Had the servers stayed up, it might have only been half an hour. Ah, well, at least we were out in time to get a decent dinner. Which we needed as the hour in line inside was at least as hot, and with less oxygen, than the rest of the bulk in the sun outside.

That set our first impression for the year, hot. And I don't mean just in Hotlanta. The rooms for the Electronic Frontiers Forum, Science and (initially) Gaming tracks had no working A/C. Imagine 100-200 people packed shoulder to shoulder into a conference room (sometimes SRO), complete with assorted A/V equipment, and you get the picture. Needless to say, we didn't hang out to ask a lot of questions afterwards.

We did get to listen to some good music, as always, though several of the concerts had lines. And, as always, most of the mixing was dubious. And one of the bands performed over half her set by flashlight as the stage lights died and had to be reset (the joys of a live performance). But the Cruxshadows concert had the best sound and mixing we've ever heard up there. Plus, we walked right in for the first time in five years. Totally worth staying up until 4 am and dragging the next day. There was still some slap-back in one of the halls, but not as bad as we've heard. We gave all the bands we saw some money to feed the iPod. We got a couple of CDs signed. Ayria seemed pretty jazzed when we told her that we knew and liked her music (and were obviously following her Twitter feed), even though we were, well, outside her core age demographic. Nice woman (but she's Canadian, so what else would I expect?). Key safety tip with most bands: lead singers tend to be focused on women (not the people buying their stuff) where bassists are more than happy to talk. But I knew that from hanging out with a pretty cool bassist in high school.

One thing they did get right this year was security. From 7 pm to 1 am, all entry into the hotels was badge or room key only. It seemed to keep out most of the muggles and local riff-raff. We encountered no floor shutdowns, no flying wedges of cops and hotel security wading through the crowds. The floors were just as frenetic, but there was never any hint of wondering if the bacchanalian revelry might erupt into a riot. Only once did my threat sensor go off, and that was fairly benign. But remember, you can make eye contact with real cops, but with rent-a-cops it might be a problem (they stare back).

What do I love about Dragon*Con? Talking art, perspective, light and shadow, writing, craft... I need to find a yearlong circle to do that with. We were missing several of our must-see speakers. We still had a couple there, but they weren't quite on their games. Generally, the panels were good, a couple with excellent speakers, but none had the inspirational, mind-expanding quality we've encountered in previous years. But we did find some time to hang out with friends which we haven't always had.

Instead of going through panel by panel, I leave you with some random impressions and lessons learned. Scientists and skeptics can be some of the least empathetic people who want to affect societal change. That's hard to do without understanding someone else's point of view. Most scientists are still so focused on their niche of study that they have a hard time applying broad (scientific) lessons to other disciplines, or understanding why certain behaviors might be beneficial from an evolutionary point of view. Modern game designers rely just as much on the hero cycle theory as writers and movie-makers. Storytelling is their primary focus, just through an interactive medium. One rather famous game designer cited Dramatica theory for creating character through-lines. Many of our attempts to boost children's self-esteem in this country have resulted instead in boosting levels of narcissism. The law of unintended consequences. When dealing with either surveillance or the apocalypse, avoid the guys with the Tacti-cool look (I love that word). Sociopathy is a viable survival option. A clipboard and a badge get you in just about anywhere. When coiling wire for making chainmail rings, don't let go of the drill.

I also came away with some good professional advice. To market yourself, become an extrovert, even if you aren't one. And if you weren't born that way, well, that might be a deficiency on your part. Look into YouTube for posting readings. People who read eBooks tend to be more loyal to the publisher than the author. The difference between commercial fiction and literary fiction is that commercial fiction deals with the big questions and gives hope for change. Literary fiction gives an experience by shining a light on a situation without making it transformative. I guess I now know which I tend to lean toward in my writing. Inspiration only comes once. If you don't write it down while it's there, it's gone forever. Just like your creative voice or vision as a writer or an artist when you're gone.

If you want to see all the panels and concerts we attended, you can find the day by day entries either on my Twitter or on my Facebook author's page (for those who haven't liked it yet, hint, hint).

You can find the band links (from this and previous years) at MySpace. Many have songs posted so you can give a listen if you like.

If you have any questions about any of them, just let me know and I'll get back to you. I'd be happy to share my notes.

Bottom line: it was a relaxing, informative and inspiring weekend as always, and much needed getaway.

For us, though, the cycle may be ending. This may have been our last Dragon*Con for a couple years to come. I've found it's always best to walk away from the table a little hungry before you start your next adventure. We'll see when it comes time to make reservations for next year.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Lughnasa 2011

Lughnasa 2011 -a reading (on YouTube)

In the struggle between light and darkness, the light is failing. The outnumbered hours of night have launched a surprise attack. Like a bad year in Machiavellian Florence, we bar the gate and lay in supplies against the long, impending siege of darkness. Resistance gathers throughout the high country, in hilltop forts and hidden, lakeside coves. Reaping maidens don gowns of green and stretch the backs of their men, their harvest promises extracted and bound with hay.

At midnight, a lone firefly finds me, like Hamlet's ghost, keeping a worried watch upon the wall. He bears a message from the summer solstice, his tiny beacon turning back the night. Like a morningtide rainbow after a sun shower, his flickering torch is a promise or a reminder. We will not be abandoned by our strongest ally in our coming time of need.

At first light, foraging parties roam the wood under a keen-eyed escort, reaping the bountiful berry harvest before it, like the surrounding faerie kingdom, falls into decay. Summer grapes, like the irides of Europa's wild-eyed children, or the wide eyes of playful garden predators, have gone from green to black overnight. Bees, like summer soldiers, gather golden nectar from colorful morning glories and crepe myrtles to create the supplies they need to overwinter in their fastness.

In distant fields and meadows, the tawny heads from the first fruits of harvest are crushed to powder beneath the circling, ox-drawn stone. Brickwork ovens throw the first heat against winter's eventual arrival. Offerings of freshly baked bread fill the air to appease the spirits of the homeless and the hungry. As we've sown in this verdant time of plenty, so in the darkness shall we reap.

We long for stability, for prosperity, for peace. But all we are given are wheat and wild grapes, fieldstone and timber, venison and salmon, spring water and perhaps a little honey. Enough to live and share if we don't become absorbed in the drama of conflict. From the elements at hand we build our lives in any way we choose, in light or in darkness, for good or for ill. In this, we are inseparable from our environment.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Summer Solstice 2011

Summer Solstice 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)

Sunrise, sunset. The day is here, the day is gone.

Summer and winter are inextricably intertwined. Like mating black snakes in a caduceus, they cross at every solstice. Sunrise on the summer solstice aligns to sunset on the first day of winter, just as summer's sunset lines up with winter's dawn. Between those twin poles, time ambles like the river running from the land of the living to the world of the dead. Its wide, unrippled mirror reflects approaching storms in blue and gray and white.

As I tread along the path beside, a mockingbird marks my passage, scalloping from post to post along a fence, always one step ahead, a taunt or a reminder, of what I am unsure. A woodpecker peers from a keyhole in time-hardened tree trunk, then retreats into its sanctuary. A flutter of crows calls back and forth across a dapple-shaded canopy, harbingers of winter tidings as yet unforeseen. Their dark conversations are as brief as summer showers, all traces evaporate beneath the resurgent sun.

Deep within the faerie wood, dawn belatedly flickers through the leaves concealing the horizon to liberate the sleeping giants from the long, sweet siege of night. The fire-stricken kings crash to their knees, their arboreal crowns shattering as they fall. A host of golden-green usurpers sprout from their sun-dispelled shadows, in want of regents as they strive to reclaim their ancient, ancestral lands.

As I wander from morning toward a deeply shadowed afternoon, time creeps forward on padded feet, unnoticed, like vines entwined across a brushfire clearing, like grass subduing the stain a midden mound or a cemetery hill, until it gently covers all.

Sunrise, sunset. The day is here, the night is come.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Beltane 2011

Beltane 2011 - a reading (on YouTube)

The White Witch has been deposed. The Green Witch has been resurrected.

At Samhain, the Frost Queen passed annual judgment against her twin and rival after usurping power at the autumnal court. The Green Witch was garroted and minced, her body cast like feed-corn across the dry and dusty fields. In the overwatching wood, oaks and maples bled in mourning. Beneath the oppressive blanket of her icy enemy, her seeds lay fallow all winter. Like a mother spider to her emerging brood, she prepares herself for the ultimate maternal sacrifice come spring, when in revenge of Medea's children, her hatchlings will devour her alive.

Each crystalline defection from the Ice Queen's occupation waters the seeds of the Green Lady's discontent, first by drips and drops then in a steady stream. The Snow Queen's alpine army melts away before the steadily advancing wall of green. At Imbolc, there was an uprising. At the equinox, a revolution. By Beltane, the ritual plunder of the White Witch's final strongholds had begun. As the last green jacked messenger arrives, the Sun Queen's court erupts into an orgy of colorful celebration.

Reborn in coldspring snowmelt, emerging from her donjon tower, the verdant maiden blushes pink and rose before the encircling soldiers of spring. Bees and wasps in black and yellow tabards, their lances sharp and shining, stand watch while common workers deflower her in turns. By Lughnasa, she will once again be heavy with child. In the wickerman at Samhain, she will be sentenced to her fate. Her ash and sackcloth remnants will be sown throughout the land. To once again lay dormant, awaiting Imbolc and the Equinox.

When the White Witch will be deposed, and the Green Witch resurrected.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Fighting the Tide

Fighting the Tide - a reading (on YouTube)

There are forces in this life we cannot resist, though we feel compelled to try. Some days, it’s as though an ancient, unseen god wants to show me things I don’t want to see, take me places I don’t want to go. Events turn unexpected and unpredictable. Lightning, tornadoes, threatened furloughs, benefit cuts, utility breakdowns, oak pollen, borderline migraines. Entropy in a word. A tide of distractions rises, threatening to sweep me out to sea.

When I was young, somewhere under ten, I went to the beach one weekend with my parents and their friends. I don’t remember much about how the day started out, only how it ended. It could have been spring or fall. I honestly don’t remember. Rafts of seaweed and sargasso were strewn along the tideline. Storms churning somewhere offshore had whipped up the gray Atlantic. The waves were four to six feet and choppy, breaking full force right upon the shore. The wind was stiff and steady, the water chill and white with foam. Everyone opted for the shelter of the pavilions in the lee behind the Australian pines. Everyone but me.

I started the day building sandcastles, as I was often wont to do. One by one, half completed, they fell to the advancing tide. Annoyed, I started building a longer, sturdier line to defend against the sea. I scavenged seaweed as filler instead of dredging deeper into the sand. I found the sargasso added strength to the barrier I was constructing. With each course of damp sand, I layered in more seaweed until the barricade was high enough for me to fully crouch behind. Finally, a rampart with a shallow moat and refused edges stood before Poseidon like a provocation.

The wind whipped the surf into a reenactment of "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice." Dark clouds loomed over the ocean. Lightning sliced across the sky. As the rain slanted sideways, I huddled behind my open-sided shelter, which kept the spray out of my face and eyes. The tide advanced steadily, driven higher by the storm. Soon, waves were crashing into the moat, then onto the front facing of my wall. The sargasso lent the structure the integrity to take the pounding, which meant I could enact hasty repairs before my battlement melted back into the sea. Its flanks resisted being undermined even as the waves began to wrap around the refused edges. My wall seemed indestructible. Behind it, I felt invincible. I was so emboldened that I began to taunt the storm and sea.

By the time my parents came looking for me, the storm had slackened. It was time to abandon the beach for the safety of our home. The lightning had passed inland and the rain had abated to a steady shower, though with the threat of more to come. The tide had retreated leaving my wall standing and intact, only slightly weathered for its encounter. My parents thought I’d sheltered in another pavilion. Had I spent the entire storm out here exposed on the beach? Didn’t I know to come in from of the rain?

These days, I have no taunts left in me. My life feels like the flotsam and jetsam tossed up from Poseidon’s angry sea. When each crisis ends, I am reminded of my mortality. I can sense the time that’s been washed away, the sand that’s slipped through the hourglass and drained beyond the shore. I wish I could reclaim the days I’ve lost in some sort of time renourishment project. But know that I can’t.

If I’m not careful, my feet get mired in a sandy past as the water swirls around them, each wave sinking them deeper until it takes the strength of a colossus just to break them free. Once I get unstuck, I backfill as much enjoyment as possible into my life by doing the things I long to do, and seeing the people I love to see. Games, puzzles, movies, books, art shows and explorations, coffees, wines and dinners. I purposefully layer the positive memories with everyday sand to reinforce the bulwark behind which I’ll shelter when I turn to fight the rising tide again one day all too soon.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III