Light and Night

Dark. Left-hand path. Descent into Hell. Root of all evil.

Evil is dark, walks to the left, below everything.

Light. Right-hand path. Ascending to Heaven. Pinnacle of good.

Good is bright, walks to the right, and is above all.

This is in mythology, religion, fiction, every day usage.

A friend and I used to spend hours debating the usage of light and dark as concepts of good and evil. We never did come to an agreement.

What is light without dark to give it depth and beauty?

The left hand path is seldom chosen, but there is no path inherently evil.

Without the depths, there is nowhere for roots to take hold, no ground for our feet.

There are two sorts of dark. There is the dark when a bag is slipped over your head, a suffocating, blinding darkness. That is the evil, the darkness that doesn’t want to see what is around it. Selfish and willfully blind.

There is the darkness of night, rest. The darkness that is not evil, but gentle and protective of secrets. It’s the stars, the wind, the lovers and the dreams.

Next time there’s a discussion of light and dark, good and evil, consider them not as flat conceptions, but living and multi-dimensional elementals. It leads to such amazing discussions, and makes magic that much richer.

Confidence

Every time I get on a horse, I’m afraid.

Every time I hit ’send’ on an email, I’m afraid.

Every time I walk into a room of people, I’m afraid.

I’m not afraid of injury on a horse, been there, done that.

I’m not afraid that I’ve said something wrong when I send the email, I almost always do.

I’m not afraid that people will think I’m strange, they usually do.

Fear has been a huge part of my life, for as long as I can remember. The form of religion I was raised to hardly celebrated confidence, personal strength or pride. On the contrary, I can’t help but compare my old self to the mice from ‘Despereaux’.

I had to be self-sufficient, but not self-confident. That’s not a real good balance. In fact, it tends to leave on feeling like there’s about half an earth under their feet. It leads to false fear…and false confidence.

I know that I’m good with horses. I know I’ve got the reflexes, the understanding, the strength to handle even the most difficult, demanding horse. Yeah, I might get beat up or kicked or be sore for a few days. But I will come out on top.

Why? Because there’s a point where fear gives way to instinct. When you don’t have time to think about it or be afraid, your reaction tells more about you than a dozen years of thought. Fight or flight.

Problem is, I can’t just react when I’m writing. I have to think. And damn is it hard.

It’s worse with a novel, not so hard with a short story. It takes months–at the least!–to write a novel. Months of thinking about how much of a failure this could be. Months of imagining how badly it could be received by test readers. Months of imagining months of work going to waste.

It’s tough. Really, really tough for someone like me. It’s almost paralyzing sometimes.

But isn’t that the foundation of success? Believing in yourself?

At least I know I don’t have to worry about my challenges for the next few, oh, decades. I’ll be over here working on getting over that fear issue.

Black Mass

I am in love with Black Phoenix Alchemy. Forgot to mention that in the earlier post.

Anyways, I’ll do a freewrite based on their ‘Hellfire‘ blend today.

Pipe smoke, heavy and rich, acrid, burned her nose, as sharp as a cigarette burn. Lucia wondered at the heat of the floor, the candles burning around her, hot leather and musk; chalk gritty under her bare back and the stifling scent of ambergris and myrrh and dragon’s blood.

The first fiery touch startled her, came from deep within. A claw in her spine, a probing wing trying to stretch in her belly. Hot breath through her lips. The chanting swelled around her, calling for some primal thing she could not understand, and her body writhed against the burning leather and hot chains. Fire seemed to sear under her skin, until she was sure flame would erupt from her fingers. Then the chains melted and pooled around her; she rose and looked at the men around her.

“What is your desire, mortals?”

Pro-Lifers Commit Murder

Does everyone see the irony here?

I grew up in an environment that was pro-life, racist, homophobic, misogynistic. I put my foot down on attending family gatherings after listening to the men sit and talk about how the Hispanic cashier probably had AIDS and how they should all be deported, how gay marriage would be the downfall of America, etc etc etc.

I can imagine them crowing right now. Hallelujah, the spawn of Satan is dead. Hallelujah, he’s going to hell. The misogynistic, racist, homophobic members of my family might as well be waving torches and donning white robes at this point. It is the sort of thing they would deeply approve of.

Read the accolades to Tiller’s compassion and care for his patients. Go read the other side of the story, the one you don’t hear about how abortions aren’t the screaming, bloody butcheries so many pro-lifers would have us believe. Read about the church usher, the man who toughed out attacks, burgleries, gunshot wounds and hatred and still gave up his life for something he believed was right.

Tiller didn’t provide an easy-out for anyone who happened to change their mind about their child. He aborted women whose children were so impaired that they couldn’t hope to lead a healthy or happy life, or women who would never recover from having a child. His concern was more long-term, more encompassing than perhaps those who scream for his death have ever considered.

The issues surrounding abortion are possibly the stickiest of any debate we face now. This isn’t gay rights, where it’s an issue of equality, as important as that is. It’s not equal pay or support for third-world nations. This is about life and death, and deciding when a procedure becomes murder, and who would be responsible. When do you ok ending a life? When is it a quick and easy fix for a mistake?

I believe in choice. But I also believe in responsibility, and that this isn’t something cut and dried. It may never be solved, and certainly not to everyone’s satisfaction.

But there’s no question what Tiller’s death was. Murder. Flat-out, stupid, small-minded, hateful murder. And everyone who cheers the murderer takes part in that murder.

If you advocate life, you don’t get to play God. You don’t get to pick and choose who lives and who dies. Either you argue for all, or you argue for none.

And that, I do believe, is a cut and dried issue.

A Case Against Magic

Magic is the cure-all of fantasy. It’s used for everything from illumination (because it’s so freaking hard to pick up a flashlight) to resurrection (Sorry, I believe dead should stay dead). It’s a sort of Deux ex Machina with the added glamor of looking cool and being PLOT-RELEVANT!

I can imagine if we had magic in every day life, if it was so common as stories make it out to be. Instead of picking up a piece of paper, you levitate it to yourself (or telekinetic it or whatever you use) You don’t get wet, because you have a rain-shield around you. The traffic is moved out of your way because you don’t like it there.

Magic is laziness in a cool suit and shades. Picking up the piece of paper via mind power means you don’t see the urgent piece of mail underneath. Because you don’t get wet, you miss a really cool moment where the day just stops and all you can do is stand and stare at the sky and cry because no one can see your tears and you just realize how wonderful real life actually is. Everyone wants traffic moved out of their way, and so it all tangles horribly. Actually, when you consider the Jersey Turnpike and LA, that’s the best case for magic already existing than I could invent!

Everything is action and reaction. By making a choice, you affect the rest of your life and that of everyone in the world. “No man is an island” is especially true in the sense of choices. Using magic offers the chance for worse snarls, tangles and troubles than before. Black magic and vengeance aren’t even included in this. Just ‘harmless’ little white magic spells. And in the end, is it any easier to focus on the piece of paper, lift it, and float it to you? Why not just walk over and pick it up?

Magic solves all our problems in fantasy, and gives the author a way around having to creatively solve the problem. Oh, no torches? Ok, we’ll cast a light spell instead of feeling through the dark and learning to rely on senses. You are wounded? Oh, let’s just magically heal that. Don’t bother learning to fight better/be smarter. We’ve got a cure.

I see too many people taking the easy way out of life any more. Coming from a background where I was expected to learn everything myself, earn each accomplishment, and not receive any reward except the job well done, it still tweaks me to see the entitlement in society. It’s as though they do expect magic to just leap up and make their lives easier.

In reality, magic would be as difficult as any other science or discipline. Years of practice and study. Uncertain results. Frustration. Lack of sex because you are holed up trying to snuff the candle. Is it REALLY worth all that to avoid standing up for that piece of paper?

Imagine where we would be as a society if we stopped believing in serendipity and miracles and things being owed us and started realizing that the best way to happy success is putting aside the tv and cheeseburger and going out and taking life in our own hands.

Happy thought, isn’t it? There’s a place for magic, serendipity and miracles. In stories. In those once-in-a-lifetime-and-I-will-never-forget-them moments. In the time when you really have done absolutely everything you can, and there’s nothing left to try. Life doesn’t owe you magic. It doesn’t owe your protagonist magic. If you want to use it, have them spend years learning to snuff a candle.

SDS-Fear

Cloudy days promising rain are the perfect time for introspection and consideration of life’s challenges. Quiet and still, nothing intruding into the peace, it leads to deeper thoughts that might not be wished for on a sunny or stormy day.

Lately, most of my introspection has been taken up by the topic of my own struggle with the deadly sins. I know very well that I suffer from chronic fear, anger and pride. Anger is the easiest of these, and fear is the one that seems to be making the most damage. So I thought I’d explore my own struggles with the sins a bit.

Growing up as a child, I learned the meaning of fear quite quickly. My mother, single in a devoutly Christian family, was threatened with being disowned if she didn’t allow my grandparents to raise me. My real father’s name is not even listed on my birth certificate, and I was formally adopted by my grandparents, with all mention of my father banned. My mother was the oldest of three children, and in a sense, I was then raised as the youngest. But the youngest daughter, at three or so years of age, had started showing disturbing signs of problems. These things only worsened by the time I was born. Doctors couldn’t find a cause of her symptoms, and so my family lived in their own personal hell of constant seizures, abberant behavior, severe emotional disturbances, and violence from her. With less mental capacity than a toddler, she took constant care from the entire family. When I was two years old, the house of cards my family had erected crumbled, and she died. I saw her die, and the repercussions have haunted me throughout my life. She drowned during a seizure, and the evidence points damningly towards certain family members. It shouldn’t have happened. My mother was kicked out about a year later, leaving me without the most basic supports a child should have. She was only allowed back when my grandmother felt benevolent or guilty.

I only remember my childhood from what family pictures and stories exist, and certain moments of terror that broke through everything else. Every other memory I have can be directly traced to some later retelling of it or picture, leaving a gray haze in the back of my mind.

My grandfather suffers from grand mal seizures also, due to his diabetes, and one of those memories is of me, probably five or six years old, huddling in the corner of his bedroom while he shook, asking my mom if he was going to die. Others involve the terrible, destructive nightmares I have suffered from my entire life. I remember every one of those!

With physical and emotional abuse, isolation, severe anger issues with the entire family, a history of psychological disturbances, and a complete lack of trust, I finally walked away from it all at 18. My grandparents and every family member except my mother disowned me, and it’s a credit to the skill of my family that I still struggle not to feel guilty about leaving hell. Extreme mood-swings, apathy, general fear, feelings of isolation and an inability to form real relationships made the next couple of years a struggle to keep my head above water. That I did so is a direct testimony to the few friends who have known what was going on, and to the power of writing in my life.

Fear is a powerful motivator in our lives. As Gemmell once said through his writing, “fear is a friendly guard dog, warning us of danger. But if we aren’t careful, it becomes a slavering wolf, chasing us through life.” Or something similar, mild paraphrasing can be excused on the basis of the book being about two feet out of reach.

Fear has always been my worst sin, the one that all the others spring from and the one that weakens and holds me back. Walking into a room, driving to work, going to a friend’s house, making a phone call, going to sleep, every one of these things used to leave me shaking and nauseous. They still are difficult sometimes to do, but possible. In fact, people often ask how I can be so confident, so fearless and tough.

Not hard if the only way to go is up.

Fear holds us back from reaching for that golden star above us, from asking that one girl out, keeps us from getting back up after we fall.

It CAN be conquered, it CAN be tamed. And by God, if it takes the rest of my life, it will be the least of my sins.

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