Sundry bookishness & a confession

"The writer can choose what he writes about, but he cannot choose what he is able to make live." --Flannery O'Connor

I was planning to start my little series on writing and on publishing (two very different matters, luckily!) today, but I am still waiting on a response from one writer who flew off to California... So I think that I shall start the series next Monday, as that will give her time and also prevent the series from being broken up by too many weekends.

In the meantime, I am only too aware that you have a deep desire to pre-order hardcover and paperback copies of my April book (ack, I fear it looks like April Fool's Day for pub date!)for all your friends, relations (even your grumpy old auntie and your uncle who smokes that nasty pipe), work colleagues, facebook friends, dogs (our chocolate lab loves, loves, loves to get her fangs into a good hardcover--she is a critic and will tear it apart), runcible cats, little ponies, talking crows and mynah birds, and greenish alien visitors from outer space, so I enclose a link to the various ISBN numbers and so forth on this very spot. The Throne of Psyche will be available via your local independent bookstore, the chains, and the usual online suspects.

I'll tell you a secret having to do with me and marketing in the meantime. Confession: I. Hate. Telling. People. To. Buy. My. Books. I have many acquaintances in this tiny village where I have lived for eleven years who are only now realizing that I am a writer. And many others who might find out in a decade or so. Because I never tell anybody. I've never understood the people who bring it up to strangers and acquaintances. How do they bring it up? Is it an art? Is it shamelessness? Is it supreme confidence in the world's absolute need for one's words?

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Nevertheless, I am going to do it for the sake of poetry. Better plug your ears!

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[Time passes.]

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Okay, you can unplug them now. I was just tweaking your e-mind: all done with the tooting for now...

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Other bookish news: Lots more The Book of the Red King poems were just accepted. (I love the way I send them out and they stay where I send. It's like magic. The Fool and the King are popular fellows.) Links to come. Stay tunefully tuned!

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Image above: Pen-friend courtesy of sxc.hu and Szuszanna Kilian of Budapest. Image below: click for a lovely big look.

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Mike-diary: The Ho Hoam Kiem turtle

Dispatches from IndoChine (March 6)

The Ho Hoan Kiem turtle is dying.

This event is national news here. The VN Yahoo homepage has photos of a rather tread-worn terrapin gracing its lead story. There is gossip on the street. He has died. Or, no, the People's herpetologists have devised a plan to save him. He has not been seen today, or he has been seen 3 times today, which is inauspicious. Or he has been seen 8 times, which is a very lucky number indeed. But as a whole, the people of Vietnam, and especially the people of Hanoi, linger over and adore the rumor swirl surrounding this most august of turtles.

The Ho Hoan Kiem turtle is the, as of yet, living, breathing, embodiment of the Vietnamese's resistance to Chinese rule. Apparently. I say apparently because I have queried many Hanoi residents who speak good English and none of them actually know the legend. Rather it took an Australian with a guide book to fill me in on the importance of this reptile. Dateline-1000 years ago. The Vietnamese are, as usual, on the suffering end of some outsider's aggression. This time it is the Han Chinese.

And it seems that things are going so bad that the Vietnamese general takes time for a deep think on a small island in the middle of Ho Hoan Kiem lake. And while contemplating impending defeat he meets a large soft shelled turtle. Things must be dire because he turns to this turtle for military advice. And the turtle turns out to be a veritable Napoleon of the reptilian world. No one I could speak with knew what the turtle actually said. My guess would be, since it was a turtle, to hole up and wait for the geopolitical weather to change. But whatever words of scaly wisdom were bestowed, the Viet general later went on to metaphorically kick the groins of the hated Han. And that is why people love this turtle.

For you see, they pretend that this is the SAME turtle. Thinking folks would know that no turtle, soft shelled especially, would survive in a 40-acre sewage ditch for 1000 years. But with a credulity that would make a middle-aged American Tooth Fairy believer seem like a rank cynic, the average Hanoi resident, from lad in short pants to veteran of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, will tell you the turtle is the same as that who held a strategic tête-à-tête with the Viet general, who was not similarly blessed with a soggy but eternal life. So reports of this turtle's illness have rocked the capital.

I was sitting in the Legend's bar, overlooking the Lo Thai To traffic circle. There is a good view of Ho Hoan Kiem lake. A reasonable translation of Ho Hoan Kiem might be "pea soup sprinkled with oil slicks and poop." It would be a reasonable translation, if not linguistically accurate. One can smell the lake from 100 yards away.

Suddenly, there is some excitement on the banks. People point, cell cameras come out. This has the effect of tossing $100 bills around in Time Square. With a rapidity that is more than exponential, Hanoians come running. In less than 5 minutes the (in theory) 4-lane round-about becomes a scooter parking lot. A huge crowd gathers on the bank, so large it backs into traffic. Buses (I'm not kidding) full of turtle gazers pull up and spill their contents like split bags of rice. The crowd at first vibrates, and then begins to sway as it pushes back and forth against itself. Up in that refuge of sanity, The Legend's Bar, the staff rush to the railing of the balcony and begin to snap pictures of the lake with their camera phones. I can't see anything. Admittedly, I am unschooled in turtle spotting, but working on the premise that a snout is a snout, my long distance inspection of the lake is fruitless.

A totalitarian state abhors spontenaity, and this turtle flash mob is about the dictionary definition of that very thing. So it isn't long before a deuce and a half truck with POLICE written on the side in perfectly sturdy English and a loud speaker that would do a Good Humor van proud pulled up. The gendarmes' first approach was an amplified maternal exhortation to disperse. But the 1000 year-old draw of the Turtle of Ho Hoan Kiem was too strong to be severed by worried harangues. So some green uniformed police with their potent-looking truncheons popped out of the back of the truck. Their clubs are long, thick, and white with a red spiral stripe covering the distance from handle to the business end. The police formed up, looking for all the world like nomadic barbers, and began to walk through the crowd waving their batons in sweeping, ankle-high arcs.

Perhaps the ancient wisdom of the turtle still prevails in Hanoi because the crowd quickly found other callings and 90% dispersed. The remainder soon followed. It seems the turtle had submerged and the mob's whole raison d'être bubbled down into the murk with it.

I had watched the whole thing from across the way and 3 stories up. And while writing now, it is easy to dismiss the crowds as silly people aggregating for a silly reason. But I must admit, when the crowd was first balling up, I wanted to rush down and join them. If not for the fact that the waitresses had abandoned their sacred duty to the bar patrons so they could scan the lake from the balcony rail, I would have paid my bill and left beer unfinished to join that crowd. When I couldn't go, I felt like a kid whose friends all got to go to the fair while he had piano lessons.

I am going looking for the snout of wisdom tomorrow.

Photograph courtesy of sxc.hu and David Boylan of Brisbane, Australia.

Mike-diary: Birds of Hanoi

Last night our youngest wore his jammies and his bathrobe inside out in hopes of a snow day, and he got one with a vengeance. Several fluffy feet of flakes were piled high before the snowfall stopped. As we are now missing the absent Mike/Dad, who is plenty warm while volunteering in Vietnam, I'll post a little from his musings. He has moved on from Saigon to Hanoi.

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The Birds of Hanoi

Compared to their hardhearted, business-driven brethren in the south, the shop owners of Hanoi seem almost feeble in their commercial drive. In truth, the shops in the north are much more interesting, with lots of local mountain tribe crafts, elegant silks, jade carvings and a surprisingly thriving contemporary art scene. Unlike the south, there is not clutching of sleeves and tugging at belt loops to entice the westerner with a stray dollar or two into a place of business. And I think no aspect of the Hanoi shop better symbolizes this difference in values than the birds of Hanoi.

You see, most shops have a bird cage in them. Even street mechanics, soaking transmission gears in oil in their make-a-due garages on street corners about the city, would not think of starting their day's venture without hanging a bamboo cage or three of vireos on a local lamp post. These dear little birds, the color of unripe tangerines with just a blush of future sweetness showing, leap and chirp frantically in a panic within their bamboo worlds. But they are thought to bring luck, and do bring a natural charm, so their discomforts are accepted as a requirement of feng shui, or luck, or just good taste. So the sorrow of the birds is felt to be a price worth paying.

I happened upon the bird selling street. Shops tend to aggregate in streets by theme here, so there is a plumbing street and a wood carving street and a funeral street, which happens to make up the far half of the bird selling street. And what a lot of birds there are! Some are weedy sparrows who are bought for the sole purpose of being released as an offering for propitiation for sins. These, much like in the Bible, are two a penny, or rather $5000 dong a matched set. They fly away with an excited confusion, dazzled by their captivity and unexpected release. The sparrow cages are the most modest. They are simple rectangles of bamboo slats. I am sure they are crowded and unpleasant. But buyers are plentiful and there seems to be a lot of sparrow-sized sins that need a Buddhist-style accounting.

More impressing cages are reserved for more impressive captives. The vireos I have mentioned. After sparrows, they are held in the greatest number and as a chorus produce a mighty chirping. Rose-quartz-colored canaries are also well represented, and, while less numerous than the vireos, they seem to take to heart the challenge offered by the other inferior but more numerous singers. Were that all jealousies and conflicts so beautifully contested! The quick cheerful chirps of the vireos strive forth against the melodious lines of the canaries, each note as a foot soldier. To stand exactly between the walls of the vireos and canaries is to place yourself at a collision of beauty.

The largest birds are some mynah birds. They are valued for their mimicry and intelligence and this value is reflected in the elaborate cages reserved for this avian royalty. Lacquered, carved, inlaid, no craftsmanship is too extravagant for a bird that can imitate the human voice or a can opener with equal alacrity. The sellers dote on these fellows, coddling them against drafts, sun, or poking fingers. These birds command the highest return and are beloved by the merchants for this. These birds smell strongly like pigeons.

These little wicker spheres of birdy joy are spread through out the city. It is hard to imagine Americans, or Saigonese for that matter, wasting effort on birds. The mess and trouble would seem too much. But here the warbling is thought to be of great value. Perhaps they believe the singing, better than tugging or wheedling, will bring the willing customer within.

Picture: The bird cage is from tootoo.com, and is made by the Vietnamese company, Chanh Khang.

The Dream of the Rood at qarrtsiluni

I have another poem in the current issue of qarrtsiluni. I'd like to thank everybody who went by and read the earlier poems--especially all of you who left comments. What a mighty heap of remarks, all so interesting! This piece is a translation from the Anglo-Saxon with podcast of the wild, rich, decorative, and wondrous The Dream of the Rood. As always, I'm turning off comments here so the 'zine gets any commentary that comes along. Enjoy a mind of long ago!