2011 – Page 4 – The Constant Harper

Poetry in Motion

UW crew team255 — The Huskies demonstrate a perfect blend of symmetry, timing and strength.

Some welcome spring with flowers. Some with horse races. In Seattle spring means the opening of boat season.

Sure, the boats are here all year round. But on the first Saturday in May the University of Washington’s stellar crew teams compete in annual races which draw thousands to line the banks of the Montlake Cut and cheer them on. In its 108 year history the UW crew teams have won 24 national championships, but winning the local Windermere Cup remains a point of pride for the Huskies. The rest of us can only marvel at their dedication and precision.

Get Out

On the last day of April a low bank of clouds finally loosened its grip over the city. Then today, Sunday, May Day, the sun shot into a clear blue sky and the constant buzz of lawnmowers carried on the soft breeze.

Some feel compelled to weed, dig, clean, whatever. Not me. I’m basking. The clouds, we’re told, will be back tomorrow. Seize the day.

Bananas Going?

Some like them ripe. Some like them green. Some like them slathered with peanut butter and fried. But most everyone likes bananas.

Now imagine a time when you can’t get them in the store anymore.

That’s where we’re headed, according to an alarming story I read not long ago in The New Yorker detailing the devastating blight which has been wiping out banana plants in Asia and Australia. In the U.S. most of our bananas come from Latin America, so we haven’t felt the impact of the blight yet. But the spread of plant viruses and pests is like the drifting of nuclear dust, only made more visible and with quicker results.

And the reason this blight looms as a greater threat than most is that, although there are more than a thousand different kinds of bananas in the world, the commercial banana industry is dominated by one variety: the Cavendish. That’s the one we slice into our cereal, tuck into our lunch bags, mash up for banana bread.

Once the Cavendish is gone, no doubt commercial growers will switch to some other variety and future generations will grow up never knowing what “real” bananas tasted like. And life will go on, as it tends to do, evolving, shifting, vanished species making room for upstart newbies. Sometimes I wonder what will take the place of humans once we’ve finished wiping each other out.

Of course, I’d like to think it’s still possible that we may learn something from all those bananas. The other thousand varieties of bananas which are resistant to the blight may not taste the same as Cavendish, or look the same – some of them have red or brown skins, for instance – but they have unique flavors and nutritional values which could spice up any meal. For this diversity we should be grateful.

As Michael Pollan pointed out in his brilliant and sobering book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, one of the most insidious problems in the modern food industry is the constriction of the food chain to a few links. The corporate empire built upon chemically dependent genetically engineered corn and soy production encourages a synthetic diet as empty of true nourishment as the vapid marketing slogans used to sell it. “Coke Is It”? Really? I think not.

The word diversity has been bandied about so much in the last couple of decades that people tend to stop listening when they hear it. The word has become a kind of shorthand for everything from fairness in the workplace to enrichment of our culture. But in terms of our planet, diversity is Nature’s insurance policy. It’s a failsafe system so that if we lose one butterfly to a menacing microbe we don’t lose them all. If we lose one elm to a bug infestation, we can still find shade under other trees.

The same principle applies with our own species. We need each other, all the shades of humanity, to ensure our strength and our future. Sure, we all have our differences. We argue, we fight. We kiss and make up. That’s what families do. It sure beats going bananas.

Swing, batter!

It’s that time when the baseball season has begun, and the first losing streak (seven games) has been snapped, and the diehard fans are still clutching those season tickets with a kind of wistful, albeit delusional, hope that this will be the year the Mariners prove they’ve got what it takes.

Not that anyone really believes this. But it’s the hope that carries us along, as we watch King Felix pitch with consistent conviction only to be undone by the limp bats of the offense. No offense. But really, that’s the problem. Again. At times last year it almost seemed as if the announcers could have phoned in the analysis.

But that’s baseball. Some teams got it. Others . . . not so much.

Still, if you get hooked on the dance to the music of baseball, you have to be there. Good or bad, win or lose, the game remains strangely hypnotic for those of us who give in to it. Since moving to Seattle I have learned to love baseball in a way I never did before. After years of watching soccer and tennis and even football, the game of baseball offers an entirely different kind of narrative. I’m continually intrigued by the variety of skills, and strategies, and personalities, by the slow unfolding of each game’s drama.

And at the heart of the game is the dynamic fulcrum of risk – the cagey battle between pitcher and batter. To swing or not to swing. It would seem a simple question. But when every pitch varies in speed and trajectory, it’s not so simple. And what can be more annoying than watching a perfect strike go by without taking a swing? I imagine it’s hard to judge a ball whizzing past at 97 mph, as they often do in Major League Baseball, so I have a lot of sympathy those guys.

As a writer, I’ve had some experience with pitches. Not the kind you see in the ballpark, but the kind that editors and agents demand before they’ll consider reading your work. A good pitch can open doors in the publishing business. But these days, the sheer volume of pitches being thrown in the publishing industry is so overwhelming that few editors and agents will consent to swing at anything unless the writer has already done some heavy lifting.

At the last writers conference I attended the most popular buzzword in the seminar programs was platform. As in: you have to have a platform if you want to be a successful writer. It’s not enough, apparently, simply to write whatever it is you feel driven to write. You have to build a platform – blog, Tweet, tour, plaster your name in as many places as possible to create buzz about yourself, to reach your target audience, to keep them informed about your books, your life, and enable fans to connect with you.

All of this sounds reasonable, I suppose. But the reality is, if you really want to build a platform, it takes money, time and a lot of effort which might otherwise be put into your writing.

So, as I’m gearing up for the publication of another book, coming soon to a web site near your computer, I’m thinking of pitches and platforms, promotions and pop flies. I’d like to think that I have fewer illusions about my writing career than I do about the Mariners’ chances of making the playoffs.

But, truth be told, I’d love to hit one out of the park.

Will it be “Moon’s Blues,” my up and coming light novel about an affable geek who tries to impress his girlfriend by managing a rock band? Probably not. But you never know. It’s a long season. Anything can happen. That’s my platform.

No Direction Home

I went back home last weekend.

Home. That place where, famously, if you go there, they have to take you in.

There are still a lot of familiar faces in the area where I spent most of my early life. And a lot of the familiar landmarks remain recognizable. East is still East. West is still West. But the direction home is no longer obvious.

The house where my family once lived together has been sold. The family itself was fractured long before. Friends have moved away. Businesses disappear. Trees age and die. The landscape alters.

I realize this is simply Time working its inexorable magic. Everything is mutable. But the human heart longs for something permanent. Thus our popular music overflows with clichés about home, “where the heart is,” “where my thoughts are straying,” etc., etc. Home, where, as George Carlin once pointed out in his brilliant monologue about the difference between baseball and football, you are safe.

Maybe that’s only in baseball. In real life, home isn’t reliably safe. Bad things can happen at home. Tragedy, heartbreak, cruelty and despair can suck the life out of any home. Yet, much as the longing for adventure and excitement lures us to seek out new places, the magnetic True North of Home grounds us to an emotional core. It’s the primal hug that makes sense of all human experience.

When I went “home” last weekend it was a bit unsettling to drive through the old familiar terrain and feel like a tourist. The actual reunion event was taking place in Delaware, a state in which I’ve never lived, though I have many fond memories of summers at the beaches there. And this event had the feel of another vacation, albeit truncated by the frantic pace of modern life.

Still, once I got there, and was surrounded by family members, some of whom I hadn’t seen in decades, the setting didn’t matter. The connection was immediate and profound. Time slipped a gear as the links of memory connected, the chain of shared experiences burnished to a new luster, bright as the silver on Patty’s necklace, lilting as Leslie’s laughter.

This is what home is to me now. Not a place on Earth, but a place in mind.

The hardest thing about growing old is the realization that it’s all going by so fast, and you really can’t take it with you. But as long as there are family and friends who share your sense of what makes life worth living, it doesn’t matter where you are. As The New Yorker writer Joan Acocella once put it: “Some people guard their home territory. For others, home is something inside them, and they can take it with them.”

That’s my new plan. With my home inside me, I’m home wherever I am.

Petal Lumination

The softer side of April casts a pale pink spell over the campus of the University of Washington. We gladly succumb.

Lend Me Your Ears

Where does enchantment lie?

Some say the eyes. Some say the lips. Still others succumb to the seductive spell of great hair.

Ears rarely enter into it. Yet, in the vast canon of fictional heroes, one character alone ranks above all others in the ear category. Mr. Spock’s greenish skin, slanting eyebrows, and air of self-control helped set him apart from the rest of the crew of the original Star Trek when the show began in 1966. But it was Spock’s pointy ears that caught the public eye and won their hearts.

Next week, on April 2, one of those legendary ears will be auctioned off in Los Angeles. Bids are already rolling in, and experts predict the ear will go for at least one thousand dollars. Detached from Leonard Nimoy’s stately head, the silicone latex prosthetic attachment looks like a broken half of a fortune cookie, and hardly more valuable. But of course, the value of memorabilia is in the mind of the beholder.

Spock’s ear symbolizes the triumph of reason over emotion, wisdom over folly, sanity over the other thing. The sort of calm clear-headedness Spock’s character embodied remains an elusive goal for most of us ordinary humans. As a general rule, we can maintain calm, reasoned thought for only so long. Inevitably life’s slings and arrows poke us just once too often and off we go, flying into the irrational emotional tailspin represented on the original Star Trek in the all-too-human characters of Captain Jim Kirk (William Shatner’s defining role) and Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy.

Mr. Spock’s iconic ears resonate beyond the generation that grew up when Star Trek was new because succeeding generations still cling to the idea that brains can trump brawn, in spite of the continual evidence that it is by no means a sure thing. Perhaps that’s why we’ll pay a thousand bucks for a limp fake ear. Because, as James T. Kirk was fond of saying, we humans need to believe in the possibility of the impossible. We need belief. In ourselves, in our friends, in our nations, and in our dreams.

Another famous symbolic prop emerged in the golden era of Hollywood film when Dorothy donned the legendary ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz. Of course, there were several pairs created by the props department, and over the years a few have been auctioned off. At the first auction by MGM in 1970, the red slippers went for $15,000. At the most recent sale in May 2000 they sold for $666,000. And they’re not even real rubies.

Of course, it’s not simply the shoes that people want. It’s the evocative power of their back-story, and the line that will forever be connected to them: “There’s no place like home.” That one goes deep into the well of human longing. E.T. longing. Thomas Wolfe longing. Eden.

On the face of it, Spock’s greenish pointy ears might not seem as embedded with significance, unless you step back, way back, lunar probe distance, and take a long look. From that perspective you can see, “There’s no place like space.” The final frontier. And it could be, if we don’t stop poisoning this planet.

The current unfolding nightmare in Japan should be enough to alert any rational human to the dangers of creating massive amounts of toxic waste for which we have no clean-up solutions. Yet the starry-eyed nuclear energy advocates insist we’ll figure out a way to deal with it eventually. It’s been more than sixty years since we started spreading radioactive waste around, and there is still no “solution” in sight.

Rational voices fall on deaf ears of corporate and political powers focused only on short-term profits at the expense of long-term planetary suicide. Perhaps the nuclear advocates sincerely believe that Science will somehow find a way to rewrite the laws of physics and biology, or, failing that, when we completely contaminate this planet, we can start over on another fresh planet.

Our continuing investment in nuclear energy is like a balloon mortgage on our planet. When it comes due, there’ll be hell to pay.

Where is Spock when we need him? Obama’s got prominent ears. If only they were a little more pointed.

Spring Tease

You can’t miss her if you’re driving along I-5 Northbound.

For whatever reason, some fan of the female form elected to give weary motorists a lift by painting an eye-catching homage to the amazing Bettie Page on the side of his house. I, for one, am grateful.

The now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t quality of springtime in Seattle demands that we all pay close attention to the breaks in the clouds. In a couple more months those blue skies will linger longer. But until then, we’ll keep our extra layers and our umbrellas handy, and try to keep our eyes on the road.

What Lies Beneath

Images of whales abound in the Northwest. Tourists come from miles around in hopes of seeing orcas breach the surface of Puget Sound. Cute cartoons of black and white whales adorn everything from coasters to key chains.

Surrounded by the casual commoditization of the idea of killer whales, it’s easy to forget the power and awesome reality of the actual creatures.

But on a windswept expanse of open ground at Magnussen Park in north Seattle a remarkable work of public art conveys the mystery and the grandeur of whales in an unexpected way.

Seattle artist John T. Young created “The Fin Project: From Swords to Plowshares” in 1998 using 22 decommissioned diving plane fins from 1960s U.S. Navy attack submarines. Massive steel fins rise out of the ground, some atilt, some buried deeper. The effect is subtle yet striking. As you walk among them you can’t help imagining giant creatures below the surface.

It’s what you can’t see that sparks the imagination.

The work resonates in many ways, but yesterday, as I revisited the site, I found myself thinking of the way we all carry on blithely on the surface of this Earth, taking for granted its solidity, its gravity, the secure foundation of our homes and hopes, forgetting, as we humans are so apt to do, that the Earth has issues of its own. The horrific devastation in Japan from the most powerful earthquake in its recorded history reminds us how puny we are in the big picture. The Earth shrugs, our fragile civilization collapses.

In the years to come, as we rebuild from this most recent natural disaster, more such events are inevitable. The continued survival of mankind will depend on our ability to help one another. Beating swords into plowshares is a start.

King Con

I spent most of yesterday being someone I’m not. Sort of a vacation from myself. I wasn’t alone.

At the Seattle Convention Center, the Emerald City Comicon was swarming with thousands of devotees of fantasy, sci-fi and general all-purpose make-believe. My kind of people.

I had always wanted to attend one of these things, but, lacking willing companions, held back, not wanting to be the lone pathetic geezer in the mosh pit, so to speak. But when one of my daughters urged me to go with her group, I ended up playing a role with which I am all too familiar: the “ironic housewife” from a sort of interactive online comic called “Homestuck.”

I know almost nothing about computer games. I’m in awe of their complexity, the speed with which the younger generation masters them, and the level of artistry in their world building and character design. However, “Homestuck” isn’t quite like any of the usual shoot ’em up, find the talisman type games. It’s kind of an existential ironic riff on the limitations of human experience and computer programming. With monsters.

I played along because, really, my main motivation for attending this particular con was that Spike was going to be there. If you don’t know who Spike is, what can I say? There’s too much back-story to cover, but, in short, he was a character on the iconic television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer and, for my money, he was the most charismatic vampire ever. Bar none. Over the course of six seasons his character continually evolved. He went from your basic blood-sucking demon, to a kind of neutered comic relief bad guy, who gradually developed a crush on his worst enemy, and ultimately, through intense personal suffering, became a heroic figure who literally saved the world. Not bad for a bleached blond creature of the night.

So, when I learned that James Marsters, the actor who played Spike, would be at this year’s con I knew I wanted to go, even though I had reservations. It can be a rude awakening to encounter one’s heroes in the harsh light of reality. Sometimes they seem a lot shorter, shallower, less heroic.

As I waited in the dark auditorium with six or seven hundred fellow enthusiasts, I hoped James wouldn’t let me down. He didn’t. As part of a three-member panel of former Buffy actors, he shone with self-effacing wit, humor and intelligence. I didn’t even mind that he spoke in his normal voice, rather than the pseudo-Cockney accent which was part of Spike’s enduring charm. I left the auditorium feeling soothed and uplifted. Not only because James didn’t disappoint, but because the entire event reminded me of why I love my counter-culture.

Dresden-Codak — Aaron Diaz, one of the many gifted artists whose imaginations expand our world.

There were representatives from all corners of the universe at this thing. They came in all ages, all sizes, all genders, and embracing a vastly diverse spectrum of belief systems. And the mood among the thousands of fans was one of mutual admiration, tolerance and respect. Sort of like the way we used to think democracy would turn out.

I realize that sci-fi fans and fantasy geeks are still in the minority in this country. But I think what they bring to the table has value far beyond the box-office. The idea that humans have room for improvement, the hope that other worlds might know a few things we could stand to learn, the hope that we can all someday just learn to get along with each other. Yeah. Maybe that’s too far-fetched. What can I say? I’ll believe anything.