Masks

The fall colors are turning fiery, the autumn wind is blowing ("O, wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being"--Shelley), and my Halloween cookies are baked. This, then, is my Halloween post. I'm always bemused by Halloween. As a kid, all I had to do was dive in and enjoy it, which I did. Once you grow up, and going around asking people for candy (with every expectation that they'll give it to you) is no longer an option, your choices, in my opinion, are much less satisfying.

You can become the kind of adult who goes to costume parties cleverly attired as a zombie or a politician and stands around drinking spiked punch, or you can be the kind that sets out spooky and/or humorous yard displays and hands out candy to the kids. There's also a third set of options if you're like me and live in an apartment building that doesn't get pint-sized trick-or-treaters or offer any lawn decoration opportunities--in which case, you can either do nothing, watch a scary movie, set out a themed candle or candy dish, or bake cookies in Halloween shapes. Since your actual responsibilities are zilch, any degree of participation is up to you. 

I usually just think about how much I enjoyed Halloween as a kid, feel a bit nostalgic, and eat some cookies (I used to set out a "pumpkin" candle holder, but I think it's in the back of the cabinet somewhere). I'm guessing that most people with kids at home re-live their childhood memories by making Halloween fun for their own children, and that sounds to me like a reasonable way to approach things. 

Many people will disagree with me on this, but I'm not really a fan of adults dressing up as ghouls and things on Halloween. One of the things I remember about childhood Halloweens was that the fun was anchored in a sense of safety. You were wandering around outside after dark in a way you never would normally, dressed as someone you definitely were not, tripping over your hem and wearing a mask, and there was certainly something at large, a special Halloween spookiness. Then you'd knock on someone's door and a solid and ordinary-looking adult that you'd seen dozens of times would answer with a bag of Butterfingers or boxes of Milk Duds, reminding you that no matter how thin the membrane between ordinary reality and the otherworld on All Hallows Eve, you could reach out and touch normal reality at any time. When there are too many big people running around in masks, it starts to seem more like real pandemonium.

I have a prejudice against masks. I was thinking about this the other night and how much in the minority I may be on the issue when I happened to read, in a memoir, about someone else's distaste for masks in the context of her visit to Venice. I think my dislike stems from the knowledge that the human face itself is a mask par excellence, requiring much skill and patience to read. If the human countenance is already a disguise (and I admit that it may sometimes be a protective disguise--a necessary thing), adding additional layers of covering seems to complicate reality a bit too much. It's a little like Inception, the movie in which dream architects find a way to enter into and function in alternative layers of consciousness, making base-level reality difficult to ascertain after a while. Which face is really yours, this one or that one?

I'm not against costumes, though. Who doesn't like to dress up? My idea of fun would be to separate the adult festivities from the children's on All Hallows, so that the adults were there to supervise the kids on Halloween and then had their own parties on All Saint's or All Soul's day. I could see saying something like, "OK, the theme is the Eighteenth Century." Or possibly, "Come as your favorite character from either Shakespeare or Mark Twain. Interpret this any way you like--only no masks." I think the fun of seeing people caught in an out-of-context sartorial challenge would be much greater than trying to figure out who's behind what mask.

You'd always have to keep a few straw hats or jerkins on hand for people who showed up without one, and you'd have the burden of trying to figure out what kind of food to serve to people dressed up as Mozart or Martha Washington. But it would be worth it, wouldn't it?

Winnowing

Last week, I didn't wax poetic about the beauties of autumn, so this week, I will. A lot of us have mixed feelings about fall, but it has its compensations. Why it is that I find myself wanting to write about it in rapturous tones every year might seem a bit mysterious, since it actually isn't my favorite season. I've thought about that, and here's what I think explains it: the movement of summer into fall is more momentous than anything else in the year other than the transition from winter into spring.

Around here, spring changes into summer almost imperceptibly, and there's not that much difference between a day in late autumn and an average winter day, at least to look at. All the bright colors of mid-autumn, the golden light, and the harvest festivals mark the culmination of the year and its fulfillment. It's a burst of exuberance before things settle down for the long sleep of winter. Underlying the celebration is the knowledge that the light and warmth of summer are going, and there's cold and snow and windshield-scraping somewhere ahead, but somehow you don't think about that on a beautiful Indian summer afternoon with leaves drifting lazily down and acorns crunching underfoot.

I seem to recall past times when fall colors were brighter than they have been in recent years--I may even have read something about climate change potentially affecting the vibrancy of autumn leaves--but I'm not sure I could reliably call it a trend. It does seem to me that both spring and autumn have been somewhat delayed in their arrivals of late. On the other hand, I remember a particular autumn day in college when a class held outside a few days before Thanksgiving had the benefit of a gorgeous blue sky and leaves of every riotous hue imaginable still on the trees. I usually think of October as the colorful month, but that's proof it isn't always the case.

You can be happy in any season. I've been elated on gloomy days and out-of-sorts on sunny ones and think it's best to let the seasons be the background to life, not the map to it. Still, it's never bad to enjoy the things that only happen at certain times of the year. Emerson said that "each moment of the year has its own beauty . . . a picture which was never seen before, and which shall never be seen again." Earlier this evening, for instance, when I took something to the recycling bin, I glanced toward the west and noticed, behind the trees, a sunset not particularly showy but unique in being a particular shade of orange I don't remember seeing in the sky before. I had to look at it for a minute to try to figure out what it was. Apricot? Peach? The color of a creamy orange sherbet, melted in a bowl? A quiet color, but a pretty one, framed by houses and subtly variegated foliage, and I bet I never see another sunset quite like it.

If there's any poet who captured the feeling of autumn successfully, it has to have been Keats. I think of his ode "To Autumn" every fall, and various lines about "mellow fruitfulness" and "ripening to the core" start running through my head round about September each year. There's his famous personification of autumn as a woman(?) winnowing her hair in a barn, a sort of late-in-the-year Botticelli or Pre-Raphaelite type, I would guess. A lovely image, and a poetic one, though I can't help thinking that if I had a barn and saw such a creature sitting in it, I'd have to ask her what she was doing there. It's my practical streak, at war with my aesthetic side. (You never know--she might be the Loathly Damsel.) Even poetry has its limits.

But enough of that . . . it's almost time to start baking gingerbread cookies for Halloween.

Mythologizing the Election

Well, it's October in Kentucky, which may not be quite the same thing as Morning in America, but it's pleasant enough weather-wise. I could wax poetic about the golden afternoons, the bluebird I saw on my walk tonight, how pretty the sumacs are, or any of a number of other things, but it's also election season, with thoughts turning not just to this year's contest but to next year's presidential race. The debate season is now underway for both major parties, and the jockeying for attention will only get more intense as time goes on.

So what's a mythologist to do? My feeling that politics is a strange business remains undiminished and actually increases the more I see. It seems to me that there's a lot of "mythologizing" going on, which has probably always been the case but is something I'm more attuned to now. I wish these mythic plays were for the benefit and edification of all but it really seems to be just another way of manipulating perceptions. We were told, when I was in grad school, that politicians and other officials use mythologists and archetypal psychologists to help craft their messages, and even if I didn't know that, I'd suspect it. The one about it being time for the Great Mother to assume the reins of power has been getting especially heavy play.

I'm not a journalist (unless I'm an occasional mytho-journalist, which I guess could be a thing), and this isn't a place where you're likely to find political endorsements. I have more ideas on who shouldn't be elected than on who should be and am more convinced than ever that things are rarely what they seem in politics, where a lot of sleight of hand takes place. I watched the rise of Bernie Sanders this summer with interest, reading as much as I could to try to assess him, his background, and his policies. The word out among many of his followers was that he wasn't being treated by the media with the same seriousness as Hillary Clinton, and it's true that I would sometimes go straight from reading an article about a huge crowd he'd attracted to yet another headline talking about how unelectable he was.

It did seem that some of the coverage was slanted against Senator Sanders, though it got to such a point of ridiculousness after a while that I wondered if it wasn't actually helping him in some quarters by making him a more sympathetic candidate (and could that even have been the intention?). I know that sounds Machiavellian in the extreme, but if I were a novelist, I'd have no trouble coming up with a plot in which a political party hedges its bets by manipulating voter perceptions so that they believe they have a real choice when in fact all the flavors are actually vanilla. They just look different in the freezer.

I applaud most of Senator Sanders' political views, and I think he's absolutely right about the need for people to become more involved in their government. If he's elected, he won't be able to bring about the kind of changes he talks about without strong support from the electorate and the cooperation of other officials. I've been through the bread and roses talk of promising candidates before and have seen it come to nothing, though I do give him credit for consistency in his views. He has been saying the same things for a long time. And I was surprised at all of the criticism directed against him over the Black Lives Matter activists this summer, which seemed to me rather peculiar. Bernie Sanders, clueless on race? That seems like a stretcher. I honestly think if you're looking for someone who would work hard against institutional racism, it would be Sanders. When Mrs. Clinton met with BLM activists this summer, she came across as tense and almost hostile in the encounter but somehow received less criticism on this score than Mr. Sanders. Strange.

I am concerned about the admiration Senator Sanders expresses for not only President Obama but also Vice President Biden and Mrs. Clinton. I see all of them as mainstream, establishment politicians cut from the same cloth, part and parcel of some of the very problems Mr. Sanders wants to fix. I'm not running for president, and he is, and I suppose it's not politically savvy for someone who's only recently joined the Democratic Party to express anything but respect for its major players (aside from the fact that Sanders has said repeatedly that he doesn't want to run a negative campaign). I think sticking to the issues is commendable, but I hope it doesn't extend to a partisan "circling of the wagons" in the event, for example, that negative information does come to light from the Benghazi committee or some other source.

Many people are talking about the "people are tired of your damn emails" comment from Senator Sanders to Mrs. Clinton on the debate stage Tuesday night. Perhaps Mr. Sanders thinks it's better to steer clear of the topic until (and if) there's more "there" there, but I question his assertion that people "are tired" of the emails. Rather, it seems to me that people are actually concerned about some of Mrs. Clinton's practices as Secretary of State and that this has been reflected in the polls. While there has been some political theater around the Benghazi committee, I think the fact that Clinton's email practices became common knowledge in the course of its inquiries suggests that perhaps the prior investigations missed some things.

Senator Sanders qualified his comment after the debate by saying that he felt the investigative process needed to play itself out, which to me is different than saying it's not an important issue. I would have liked it better if he'd made this comment during the debate rather than afterwards and hope that neither Senator Sanders or anyone else will object if negative information comes out about the Obama administration or any other entity. Truth shouldn't be a partisan perception, as I think Mr. Sanders would agree, if he's the politician many people hope he is.

Well, to paraphrase Bette Davis in All About Eve, "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride"--as always, when it comes to politics. And I haven't even talked about the Republicans.

Congratulations--You're a Grail Author

When I started reading (or actually, finishing) a children's book series in July that dealt with British mythology, I didn't know I'd be spending a month's worth of blog posts writing my own version of the Grail story. It was completely unplanned, as my blog posts usually are. I found out, though, that I haven't been able to let go lately of what's sometimes called the Matter of Britain, a key part of which is the Grail literature. It's not all that surprising since I've never really gotten over my fascination with King Arthur, the Round Table, and the Grail that started around age eight. It only takes a little encouragement to reignite the spark.

From what I can tell, Arthurian studies is a subset of medieval studies (or possibly Celtic studies, depending on whom you ask), and Grail literature is a further subset of that, so it's sort of like that riddle wrapped in a secret rolled up in an enigma that you've heard about (apologies to Winston Churchill). My initial research into this area a few years ago showed me that there's a lot of controversy surrounding the "origins" of the Grail material. It's a fascinating subject, but the great thing about just trying to tell the story is that you don't really have to worry about who's right or wrong on all of that. There are many versions of the Grail story, and while there are common elements, there are so many differences between them that it's hard to say just what the "official" story actually is. There really isn't one, unless you consider Chretien de Troyes' version as a starting point (and he actually didn't finish his).

I really just thought it would be fun, considering all the different versions of the story that are out there, to put together my own narrative with all the parts I like and some bits of my own thrown in. Being completely ad hoc and spontaneous, it's certainly no more the cat's pajamas than any other version (and probably less so), but it did satisfy my yearning to tell a cohesive story, and more than that, to try to get at that most elusive idea of all--what is the Grail, exactly, and what does it mean?

What initially attracted me to the story as a child had something to do with this indeterminacy. Arthur's world, as I experienced it, had a mysterious quality that made it hard to pin down. While the setting had an ostensibly Christian background, there were supernatural elements that made it uncanny--wizardry, inanimate objects with a life of their own, strange beasts, magical occurrences, and an atmosphere both solemn and eerie. It didn't belong to the world of fairy tales exactly, but it seemed to hail from some long ago and far away iteration of medieval Britain, or at least a through-the-looking-glass version of it. There was nothing else like it.

Anyone familiar with the Grail story in any of its renditions would have recognized in mine such standard features as the Quest, the Grail Castle, the Maimed King, the Perilous Bed, the Chapel of the Black Hand, and the Loathly Damsel. I didn't necessarily order the elements in the same way or put them to the same use as other writers have done, being most concerned with just playing around and seeing what I could come up with within the broad outlines of convention. In other words, I did the same thing as everyone else and used artistic license.

To my own ear, my version picks up on some of the tragedy depicted in renderings such as Tennyson's, in which the Quest for the Grail, ostensibly begun as a high adventure, is actually the beginning of the unraveling of the Round Table. I initially thought Gawain's stay in the Grail Castle might be somewhat light-hearted, more in the spirit of Wolfram von Eschenbach's humorous telling, but as soon as Gawain encountered the lions in the vestibule, things started going in a different direction. I initially pictured the great hall of the Grail Castle as a more welcoming place, comfortable and luxurious, but then a monkey appeared on the candelabra and things took on a more haunted aspect. To be true to what I think of as the spirit of the stories, I had to adhere to a serious tone, though I found Gawain's (understandable) reactions to things to be sometimes humorous.

If you were expecting Perceval, Galahad, or Lancelot as the hero and wondered why Gawain is in there, that's easy. Gawain does appear in some of the traditional stories as a Grail knight, and I consciously settled on him because I wanted more of a workaday, everyman knight than a paragon. Given all the fantastic adventures he was about to encounter, I thought a more lucid, practical-minded character would be a better foil to the general strangeness than a saint would be. While Gawain is a fine knight, he is also a human one, and I wanted someone I could relate to, someone whose reactions I could understand. (This isn't necessarily the way I would have seen the story as a child, when all of the knights seemed much alike to me, but as an adult I tend to differentiate more.)

It was for that reason also that I left out the Siege Perilous, a motif that appears in some of the traditional stories in which the Chosen Knight, by reason of his superiority, is the only one who can occupy a certain seat in the King's Hall without coming to grief. I always liked the idea of this seat, which by some kind of magic is able to differentiate the true from the false (sort of like the Sword in the Stone can select the true king), and I thought about putting it in. I decided against it because in the end it seemed contrary to both the character of Gawain and the theme of my story, insofar as it has one.

Well, you might be saying, fine, but what about those things you didn't explain--like what did the running girl throw in front of the knight that caused the horse to stumble? What was all that about? (The answer is: I don't know, though maybe it'll come to me one night while I'm making dinner or mopping the floor. All I know is this was not a damsel who required rescuing.) Well, then, you ask, what about the Grail, huh? Did you, Wordplay, ever get around to saying exactly what that is?

As far as that goes, I'm not one of those who think a satisfying Grail story is a reductionist one. I will say that to me, the old myths and tales of the magical horn or cauldron of plenty seem to have a strong echo in the Grail, so that there is the idea of a mysterious source of abundance. It's obvious though, that this source of bounty, whatever it is, is tied to much more than just material plenty, seeming to be not only somewhat ambiguous in nature but also somewhat self-referential. If you're wondering how many times the Grail actually appeared in the story, and whether the cup in the Grail castle is the same Grail that appeared in Arthur's hall, I've got to say, those are some really good questions.

I thought I could tell the Grail story in one post, or at the most two, and was really surprised when it took four. I sat down to do each one feeling some enjoyment as the story unfolded but also the dread of someone who's taken on an ambitious project. It was dissertation time all over again! It seemed kind of brazen, to be honest, but I started it on the spur of a moment, and once started, it seemed best to go through with it, one of my motivations actually being to find out what was going to happen.

Somewhere along the way, I started thinking about the great Henry James, a writer whose labyrinthine prose both fascinated and infuriated me when I read him at an earlier stage of life. At the end of his novel The Wings of the Dove, one character says to another something to the effect of, "Well, let's just go back to the way we were before all this happened." And the other character says, quite simply, "We can never be as we were." I had that in mind as I wrote my ending, as something of that spirit of change seems to permeate the Grail story as I understand it.

As for Gawain, I hope he got a good dinner and a good night's sleep after his return, but whether he did or whether he didn't, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Gawain at Camelot

(Many versions of the Grail legend exist, with various authors each selecting and arranging elements to suit a personal interpretation. This is my attempt.)

Gawain's Further Adventures in the Wild; a Nap; a Return

As Gawain journeyed closer to Camelot, some of the blighted look lifted from the land. It no longer appeared barren, and the fields and trees took on the green of early spring, though the air was chill and few birds sang. Gawain made steady progress until early afternoon, when he stopped in a glade to let Gringolet rest, seating himself beneath an apple tree. He heard the sound of bees buzzing somewhere nearby; the glade itself seemed warmer than the open lands he had been passing through, and soothed by the warmth and the murmuring of bees, he fell into a light slumber.

As he dozed, a dream, or perhaps it was a vision, came to him, and he thought he was once again in the hall of Corbenic at night, with the shadows thick in the corners and a pale moonlight streaming through the windows. Before him, Gawain saw the bleeding lance of the strange procession he had witnessed standing upright of its own accord, the blood flowing into the cup that contained it at the base. Gawain saw no one in the empty hall, but he heard someone weeping. Then it was as if he had come back quite suddenly to himself, there beneath the tree, and there was the sound of a galloping horse fast approaching.

A maiden, very fleet, ran swiftly across the glade in front of him, pursued by a knight covered in black armor from head to toe. In the twinkling of an eye, she threw something behind her before disappearing into the trees, and the horse pulled up short, rearing and plunging. As the knight struggled to control the animal, Gawain sprang up with a shout and drew his sword in challenge. But then Gawain opened his eyes, and though he was somehow on his feet, the glade was as empty and quiet as it had been before, except for the droning bees, and though his hand was on his sword, he had not drawn it.

I've been drowsing, he said to himself, and it's time to move on if I'm to reach Camelot by nightfall. But he was troubled by his dreams, even as he readied Gringolet for leaving, and he remained thoughtful even when the glade was far behind, though the lands around him grew ever more familiar and he could almost taste Camelot sweetly on the breeze. And happy would he be to arrive there, in the place he had loved so long and well. And it came to pass, when at last he came out of a small wood to the west of Camelot and looked upon its white walls, graceful towers, and flying pennants, that it was but late afternoon, and he was in time for dinner.

Gawain left Gringolet to a bowing squire in the courtyard and hurried into the King's hall. As he entered, everyone turned to see him, and a hubbub arose as the court realized that it was Gawain returned safely to them; he was greeted on the left and right by the knights and ladies of the court, and Arthur himself rose to embrace him.

Arthur said to Gawain, we no longer have to wait this day for a marvel before sitting down, for now we have one in our midst.

Glad as I am to be among you again, Gawain said, I did not think to have produced such wonderment after only a few weeks' absence.

A few weeks? exclaimed the King. Why do you talk of a few weeks?

I thought it had been no more than that, said Gawain. How long, then, have I been gone?

Truly, it has been three years since we saw you last, Arthur told him, and we thought not to see you again at all. Have you been in the land of fairy, under some enchantment all this time?

That may be, said Gawain (who had heard of such things).

And now you must tell us about it, the King said, leading Gawain to his seat. But, just to show that they were not yet finished with marvels for that day, a commotion near the door brought everyone up short. As they all turned to look, a lady entered the hall on a mule, the seneschals, even including Sir Kay, having been quite unable to stop her. Remarkable as this was, her appearance was even more so, for though she had the form and bearing of a woman, her aspect was hideous. She had the furred face of a bear, the tusks of a boar, the ears of a salamander, and the eyes of a cat, though other than that she was rather fine.

A boon, she said to Arthur. I require a boon, if there is any courtesy in this court.

You have but to name it, Arthur said, and we will assist you in any way we can.

My name is Sovrentee, and my business is with this knight, she said, pointing a finger at Gawain. Though, she added, I doubt he will be pleased to learn of it.

Indeed, I will do what I can for you, said Gawain, if you will tell me what it is.

A little thing, a mere trifle, she said. I crave a kiss from you.

All the court gazed at her silently, knowing that the rules of knightly courtesy required Gawain to fulfill her request and also knowing that Gawain would abide by them, but wondering how he would bring himself to do it.

But Gawain did not hesitate, approaching her with a mannerly air and giving her the kiss she required. But though there were those in the room who might have expected--given the tales they'd heard--that this loathly damsel would suddenly metamorphose into a beautiful maiden after the kiss, no such transformation occurred. Gawain himself stood impassively, but many of those present held their breath to see what would happen next. What did happen was that the merest tip of the lady's snout, black and leathery, fell off, revealing what looked like a pinprick of human skin underneath.

The Lady Sovrentee looked at Gawain then and laughed, loudly and long. I didn't think you'd do it, she said to him, though little good may it do you. Then turning her mule around, without another word, she left the hall, and was never seen at Camelot again.

What means this? Arthur then said to Gawain. Do you know this lady?

No, said Gawain. Though by her manner, she knows us.

Does this relate to the adventure from which you have just returned?

I think, said Gawain slowly, that it bears on that, and also on the court, though it is only my opinion, and I wonder much at the appearance of this lady here today.

Well, what of your quest, then? said the King. Were we not told that the knight who undertook it would come back to explain to us the meaning of the Grail and its appearance in this hall?

Gawain then said, I can only tell you that though I may have encountered the Grail on my quest, it was not in the same manner as I saw it here in Camelot. Ah, me, what a rare gift it is, as I know now and have always known.

And it was only to say this that you have been kept from us all these years! exclaimed the King. Is there nothing more to this mystery?

Yes, Gawain said. It is in this wise: no one knight can achieve the Grail always and forever. You must let each of your knights go, as they wish, and one by one come back, or not, as the case may be, and tell what they have seen, if they are able, and willing.

All of my knights? Arthur said in astonishment. But you have been away for three years! If I were to let all my knights pursue this errand, it would empty out my court. It would break up the Round Table.

That's as may be, Gawain replied. But unless that happens, I fear the visit of the Grail in this hall will become but a fable, a relic, a riddle told by the fireside in ages to come.

But my court, said Arthur, my Round Table, which was established for the sake of honor, courage, and chivalry, and the doing of great deeds! If the Round Table is broken, we will lose all that we have struggled to achieve. Things must remain as they have been, or it is all in vain.

I fear, Sire, Gawain said sadly, that never again will things be as they have been.

--End--