Dancing rain god figure, Altar O, Quiriguá, Izabal, Guatemala

The first days of my second trip to Guatemala, everything felt weirdly comfortable, familiar. The sight of the one-legged guy nimbly navigating the steep steps of a chicken bus to ply his scarred palm and sad story no longer blows my mind. Likewise the spiderweb cracks cris-crossing the impenetrable blackness of every car windshield in the city. I have learned the appropriate words to apologize politely for being two feet taller than everybody else on the bus and my backpack clumsily wonking them all in the face. The dudes with tin shotguns on street corners and in tienda doorways no longer fill me with fear. In fact they almost make me feel safer—which may even be their actual purpose.

All of which was satisfying in a way. I felt less helpless, better able to actively participate in my surroundings. But I started to worry I was just on vacation here—that if I wanted the intensity and awe and revelation of my previous experience, I should have traveled someplace else.

I’m always looking for new setting details—unique tidbits of color or scent, idiosyncracies of human interaction that will make an otherwise mundane story leap off the page. I’m also looking for entirely new settings into which I can expand my spotty experience, the range of subjects and places about which I can “write what I know”. This isn’t the only reason I travel, but when I do travel, there’s a strong chance it’s what I’m doing at any given moment: soaking it all up like a sponge. I talked about this once before, including some caveats, in Expatriates and Homebodies.

There’s a danger, though, that I’ve run into repeatedly: falling too hard for a particular setting, loving it so much that it starts to feel wrong, disrespectful, to try to assimilate it into my fiction. I’m afraid to take liberties for fear of screwing up the truth that made me love it so much in the first place. This has happened to me most often and most painfully with respect to precolombian cultures. The Anasazi (more accurately the ancestral Hopi) have had a strong influence on my wild west centaurs setting, but all the stuff that actually includes them is in a trunk never to see the light of day. The Aztecs (more accurately the Mixtecs) I am afraid to even touch. With the Maya, it’s even worse. In the past I have been unable to stop myself writing slavish, Castaneda-influenced historical fiction about how the Mayans possess the spiritual Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything and we white people with all our rationalism don’t have the ghost of a hope. Which I loved, and even managed to sell, but which now fills me with uncomfortable embarrassment. I have endlessly blogged about them. And very recently, tenatively, I’ve been thinking about how I might dip my toe back into writing about them—though in a very different way than before.

I owe this new approach to this second visit to Guatemala.

That initial, superficial sense of familiarity never went away. But it was very quickly superseded by a whole new set of questions. I saw gradations, depth, in what had seemed uniform, and when I looked a little closer, I saw even more. I found myself thinking more and more about individuals—about character. What’s the difference, in terms of circumstance, upbringing, past experience, between the tuktuk operator who drives the white folks in circles to confuse them then tries to charge triple, the tuktuk operator who drives the white folks past his mom’s house to show them off to his nieces and nephews, asks the minimum fare without even haggling, and comes back to get them at a scheduled time at no extra charge, and the tuktuk driver who butters them up with disingenuous chatter, then veers into a blind alley and pulls a gun? (A tuktuk is a three-wheeled golf cart shaped like a giant red egg, powered by a lawnmower engine and blazoned with Jesus slogans, used as a car-for-hire for local transportation.) How do the Catholics and the Protestants get along with the Mayan traditionalists? How do the Mayan traditionalists get along with a more secular, idealistic younger generation? How does Guatemala look to somebody who moves to South Dakota to start a family, then has to come back and spend years away from them trying to secure a visa? And how does any of it develop into an integrated, educated, well-informed indigenous population, still in possession of its cultural identity, yet capable of joining forces to foster positive change, say, to effect a representative government under an indigenous president, like in Bolivia, or take advantage of digital media to foster political change, like in Egypt and Morocco?

The picture I have isn’t full enough, not nearly. I need to go back again, and again after that.

And the answer I have come upon for how to write fiction about a place and a culture I love too much to disrespect? Complexity.

Writing fiction about anything is an exercise in simplification. Words are never enough to encompass anything, the confines of narrative, of storytelling, even less so. The only way to honest about it, with yourself and with your readers, is to admit you don’t have the answers, and to try, to the best of your ability, to demonstrate why. I think the fiction that best succeeds at this (no coincidence, the kind of fiction I love most), is the kind that leaves things open. Borges, Asturias.

A king in the jaws of a jaguar-crocodile, North face of Zoomorph P, Quiriguá, Izabal, Guatemala

I have a story out in the new issue of The Future Fire, a politically-oriented online SF magazine featuring a super-awesome ironical Nietzsche quote (perhaps the best kind of Nietzsche quote) about the value of escapism.

To invent stories about a world other than this one has no meaning at all, unless an instinct of slander, belittling, and suspicion against life is strong in us: in that case, we avenge ourselves against life with a phantasmagoria of another, a better life.

—F. Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung

“Maryann Saves the World” is a piece of full-on, unapologetic, angry environmentalist escapism I sat down and wrote in a huff after watching some of my favorite woods in the whole world (in Westwood, a little town where I grew up, named for its awesome, under-appreciated, steadily vanishing woods) get knocked down and dynamited and replaced with landscaping and mcmansions. Writing it was a wonderful catharsis, which will completely justify that Nietzsche quote—and in by-no-means ironic fashion—unless, by some miraculous stroke of wish-fulfillment, a few complacent armchair environmentalists find their way to it, read it, and are re-energized to change their evil ways.

If you fit that description, please go read!

Here’s a little piece of the super-cool angry mansion-eating thicket illustration the story got from crafty artist Carmen:

I love the Mayans. That ought to be obvious to anybody who’s even looked at my WordPress theme. And I guess that makes me biased. Look back through the film category of this blog and there’s a lot of needley criticism of a lot of movies with Mayan themes. For a movie that’s blatant about it the way 2012 is blatant about it, I go into the thing harboring at the same time a sense of dread and a set of unattainable expectations. Which is, of course, not anything like the state of mind that causes people to make movies with Mayan themes. They do it because human sacrifice and murky prophecies penned by ancient mystics from lost civilizations are freaky and cool, and there are a lot of other people out there like me who drool over them.

And I guess because of the mystery involved, people’s imaginations seem to be more inspired by the iteratively more far-fetched folkloric misinterpretations of these myths than the real thing. Crystal skulls, for example, sure do seem a hell of a lot cooler in the popular perception than, say, mossy ones. And I can get behind that. I can sit and enjoy the popcorny adventure elements while managing to mostly ignore my nagging annoyance with the associated historical inaccuracies, cultural insensitivities, even the occasional new-agey hyperbolic pseudo-prophetic ego trip. For the sake of the story, I can look past that stuff. I know what poetic license is. And to a certain extent, the organic, evolving, cyclical nature of Mesoamerican and precolombian mythology lends itself perfectly to that kind of speculation. These are stories that propagate and develop through oral tradition, improvisation. Changing old stories to tell new truths, and vice-versa. There’s room for sprawling, reverently researched historical epic like Gary Jennings’ Aztec, transportive surrealistic allegory like Asturias’ Hombres de Maiz, absurdist, hallucinatory postmodern ultraviolence like Sesshu Foster’s Atomik Aztex and intimate, intense contemporary fairytale like Aliette de Bodard’s “Blighted Heart”.

I love all that stuff. I love it to death. Which maybe means I’m less critical of Mayan influence in fiction than in film…or maybe it means that fiction’s better! Ha! But anyway.

All that said, every time I see the 2012 trailer, it gets harder to sit through, and my inclination to see it gets tinier. The best thing about that trailer is over before the titles have even finished rolling, and it’s this:

An actual, beautiful piece of Mayan relief art, CGI’d to look like it’s carved into the side of the three-million-foot high movie title logo. That one tenth of a second gives me tingles. The rest of it can go throw an aircraft carrier at itself for all I care. Because as far as I can tell, it doesn’t have a story. It may have a character or two, but mostly it appears to be about some CGI death and destruction. It doesn’t even seem to be bothering to use the mythology at all, even for entertainment purposes—it’s just a convenient date they can assign some doomsday to. And that kind of thing really does have the potential to make me mad. Because not only is it playing to the lowest common denominator at the expense of practically any resemblance to the noble, ancient art of mythmaking, and frankly bears more resemblance to a fireworks display or a line of cars slowing down to look at a wreck than it does to storytelling, but it’s perpetuating the worst, most irresponsible part of the stupid pop culture folklorification of Mayan culture. And it’s making me afraid that what I’m about to say actually still does need to be said.

There won’t be any %&*@ 2012 apocalypse.

Now, if we’re lucky, maybe there just might be a singularity. Or at least a global reawakening. I sure hope so, because for crying out loud, we could use one.

More about all that, and what the Mayan mythology and “prophecy” actually predicts, next week.

But the main point of this week’s angry anti-2012 rant is simply this: go ahead and entertain me with alien-powered crystal skulls and doomsday scenarios if you must—but couldn’t you at least try to engage with the underlying ideas a little bit? The history, the art and culture and mythology of the Mayans has so many fascinating, pertinent, complex and thought-provoking lessons to convey. Can’t we talk about that just a little?

More of that next week too.

For the stories in our second chapbook, each of us at The Homeless Moon chose as inspiration a fictional setting. Here’s the first scene of mine, “The Cannon and the Prophetess”:

One Kestrel pronounced the last phrase of the sonnet he had been reciting for the Duchess of Ennasin, and the crowd of loungers who made up her court erupted in applause. Acknowledging their flattery, he lowered himself to one knee.

“No, no,” said the Duchess, twiddling her manicured fingers to indicate he should arise. “You mustn’t prostrate yourself. Your primitive origins are of no consequence—you outrank me, Your Majesty!”

The assembled nobles tittered at their hostess’s kind condescension.

With an abruptness inappropriate to tact—but which he had come to know would be expected, secretly desired, of an educated savage such as himself—One Kestrel surged to his feet like a predator ready to strike. The bones and beads sewn in his robes of state rattled satisfactorily, the brilliant feathers of his royal headdress rippled, and he allowed his eyes to flash just so.

The nobles gasped, recoiling; this time, the nervous laughter of the Duchess betrayed an underlying terror. “My dear Captain Saturno, you are to be commended on such a magnificent find! If only you would allow me to purchase him from you.”

Captain Saturno took a knee himself. Resplendent in his shining steel cuirass and waxed moustache, he made a flourish, and taking her offered hand, placed his lips to her ring. “Your praise is acknowledged most humbly—but I am afraid King Kestrel cannot linger, for he is called away on an engagement at another court—and I’m sure Your Eminence could not wish to sully His Majesty’s reputation by making him late.”

“At the very least,” the flush Duchess begged, “allow me to offer His Majesty a parting gift—a boon. Name anything! It shall be wrapped and placed in his flagship’s stateroom, where my court’s generous donations to his cause already await.”

One Kestrel drew back overeducated lips from filed teeth, and throwing a ravenous glance at his master and keeper, uttered that too-familiar entreaty with which he’d caused himself to be expunged from so many a court. “There is one small secret I dearly desire. I can only
further impose on Your Eminence’s hospitality in this: if you would, provide me with your military’s recipe for gunpowder.”

Amidst the ensuing uproar, Saturno clutched One Kestrel by the elbow and propelled him from the court. His face was bloodless, blank—but whether with rage or something else, One Kestrel didn’t know.

Once they were safe aboard the caravel Constança, Captain Saturno barked orders to throw off the moorings and get underway. He escorted His Primitive Majesty One Kestrel, King of America, to his sumptuous, gift-strewn lodgings in the brig, shoved him inside, and slammed the door.

And here are the relevant lines from Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, from which I took my inspiration:

Pantagruel then asked what sort of people dwelt in that damned island. They are, answered Xenomanes, all hypocrites, holy mountebanks, tumblers of beads, mumblers of ave-marias, spiritual comedians, sham saints, hermits, all of them poor rogues who, like the hermit of Lormont between Blaye and Bordeaux, live wholly on alms given them by passengers. Catch me there if you can, cried Panurge; may the devil’s head-cook conjure my bumgut into a pair of bellows if ever you find me among them! Hermits, sham saints, living forms of mortification, holy mountebanks, avaunt! in the name of your father Satan, get out of my sight! When the devil’s a hog, you shall eat bacon.

I’m not going to make any attempt to synthesize one with the other; chances are it would turn out a disaster, and anyway I’d much rather just encourage you to read the story and form your own opinions.

So instead, I’ll close with Gustave Doré’s utterly demented evil jester illustration to Rabelais’ prologue, which starts like this:

Most noble and illustrious drinkers, and you thrice precious pockified blades (for to you, and none else, do I dedicate my writings)….

‘Master,’ said the lion, looking at the boy with glowing eyes. ‘You who bear the emblem of the Childlike Empress, can you tell me this: Why must I always die at nightfall?’

‘So that Perilin, the Night Forest, can grow in the Desert of Colors,’ said Bastian.

‘Perilin?’ said the lion. ‘What’s that?’

Then Bastian told him about the miraculous jungle that consisted of living light. While Grograman listened in fascinated amazement, Bastian described the diversity and beauty of the glimmering phosphorescent plants, their silent, irresistible growth, their dream-like beauty and incredible size. His enthusiasm grew as he spoke and Grograman’s eyes glowed more and more brightly. ‘All that,’ Bastian concluded, ‘can happen only when you are turned to stone. But Perilin would swallow up everything else and stifle itself if it didn’t have to die and crumble into dust when you wake up. You and Perilin need each other.’

—Michael Ende, The Neverending Story

I visited Montreal for the first time this past weekend, on the event of my sister’s graduation. Had an enjoyable time drinking fine French Canadian beers, pretending to speak French and struggling valiantly to hold my own with idealistic, new-minted Canadian intellectuals. Also spent a fair amount of time wandering the streets presenting my country-boy fish-out-of-water colors to the absurdly thin and fashionable Quebecois in my unhip hick flannels and wool and silly aussie hat. It rained a lot. I stood under a lot of awnings in zen contemplation of clouds, hid out in bookstores (found a nice used copy of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler) and the Musee des Beaux Arts (viewed ghostly panoramic tintypes of the Bay of Havana, glorious hyperbolic propaganda posters of the Cuban revolution), stepped in a lot of puddles and got a lot of drenched. Like I said, an enjoyable time. But I am a simple man, and I have to admit, the best part of the weekend was last night at 11 after the long car ride home, standing in my garden with the stars and the seedlings and the dregs of a half-pint of homebrewed kolsch.

It’s the contrasts that make meaning.

I just found the announcement that Renard's Menagerie #5 is now available for ordering, and with it my whimsical short story about the evolution of parrots, "A Matter of Scale".

This was an older story and one that was pure fun to write. I wrote it back in 2005 as an application story for Odyssey, and so also thanks go to the famously wise Jeanne Cavelos for her critique of the story. Many of her points were echoed by justinhowe of its scribe_fu posting, so thanks there also.

I was particularly excited about the fantastic artwork that Amber Hill created for this story. I first contacted Jennifer Miller (nambroth) to see if she might be available, and she suggested Amber (vantid), whose work I also have greatly admired for years. Amber put a tremendous amount of work into this. After I connected her with Fox I didn't even realize they were actually going ahead with commissioning her for the magazine, so I just sent a couple of emails and several months later this is what she showed me! Not only is this a fantastic piece of art (I can't wait for the prints to become available), she also put in a couple of specific birds -- Smeagol is there in the bottom right, and nambroth's Khu is perched on the dragon's shoulder.

The story is very lighthearted and full of inside jokes for parrot owners. I don't generally talk about my actual writing process in blog-space -- I certainly understand the drive of writers who do, but for me it's a bit too under-the-hood. However, I will say that this one was, no pun intended, a "pet" story of mine and I'm both glad for it to have found the home it did and of course ecstatic about the artwork.

In other publication news, I heard a few days ago that my short poem "Theoria" has been accepted by John Benson for a future issue of Not One of Us. It is another outside-my-usual-milieu work dear to my heart for its peculiarities, so good stuff there. It must be that kind of week.