OmegaMom

Last night OmegaDad and I finished watching our movie at 12:30 a.m. (there was a break at 11 p.m. to go pick up the dotter; she couldn’t quite do a full night away from home).  When I turned off the light in the office, which we were using as indirect light for the family room where we were watching the movie, it was dark.

Holy moly.  When did that happen?!

So here we are, a month past solstice.  At solstice, the sun set at 11:42 p.m. and rose at 4:20 a.m., and the sunrise/sunset calculator at my favorite site showed “light” for the start and end times of all forms of twilight.  Now, in last third of July, the sun is setting at 11:09 p.m. and rising at 5:02 a.m.  And we now have official start and end times for “twilight”, with “light” showing for civil and astronomical twilights.  According to this calculator, we will get civil twilight starting on August 6.

(The U.S. Naval Observatory has a nice discussion of the difference between “twilight”, “civil twilight”, and “astronomical twilight”.)

Anyway, the gloaming was noticeably less gloamy last night, which means we may actually get to see some stars in, oh, two months.

After the movie ended, we headed upstairs and piddled around, clearing away used dishes, turning off lights, closing blinds, and I went outside to the kitchen porch to have my last smoke of the night.  I leaned on the railing, and gloried in the dimness, then glanced down at the rose bush beneath me.  And there, flitting about in the twilight, were moths.

Flittering back and forth, silver, white and gray.  When had those moths appeared?  I didn’t remember them from a few weeks ago.  Did they need the dimness to avoid being eaten by birds?  If so, what did they do when there was more light around, just a few weeks ago?

Ahhhh…

All of these questions were prompted, actually, by my recent reading of a gem of a book called “In A Patch of Fireweed“, by Bernd Heinrich.  A few weeks ago I was left bereft by having read all my new science fiction books, re-read all my old SF and fantasy books, and needing something to keep me entertained while I sat by OmegaDotter’s bed when she fell asleep at night.  I started with OmegaDad’s copy of John McPhee’s “Coming Into the Country” (a great read, and very descriptive of the type of mindset that one finds amongst Alaskans), and then found myself needing another book.  So I browsed OmegaDad’s bookshelf and found this one, purporting to be an autobiography of a biologist.  It was a slender volume, so it seemed to be a fairly quick read, and the mention of fireweed appealed to me as the fireweed are beginning to bloom here.

It’s a lovely book.  It’s lyrical, it’s gently humorous, it describes a boy’s journey from a childhood in a war-torn Europe to adulthood as a biologist who spends his time studying insect thermoregulation by sticking thermocouples up the ass of hornets and bees.  And it does a splendid job of describing the constant babble of questions that prompt a biologist (or any scientist, I would think) to pursue his or her studies.  A glance at some ants emerging from a nest raises a quick question, which raises another, which leads to some study on a few consecutive days, which leads to yet more questions and some answers.  A few months later, looking at some bees foraging on a hot summer’s day leads to another set of queries, which circle back to the original questions.

It’s hard to describe how wonderful the book was.  I loved it.  It was his description of his endless curious observation of the world around him that led me to looking at those moths and asking those questions.

Later, as OmegaDad and I laid in bed trying to sleep, I mentioned the moths to him, and shared some of the things I had wondered, and we had a great little discussion, then snuggled up in spoon fashion, closed our eyes, and fell asleep.

There is something profoundly satisfying about being able to toss a small bomb at a living creature and feel righteous about it.  It gives me a teeny tiny glimmer of understanding about people who are willing to subsume themselves into hatred and prejudice; it’s visceral.

In other words:  I threw a firework at a pair of moose who were in the yard and felt a warm glow of achievement as these huge critters went barreling off through the woods.  Into one of our neighbors’ back yards.  Oh, well.  They’ve lived here a long time, surely they already have the moose thang sussed out, unlike us hapless Alaska newbies.

Aside from that, nothing is roiling my brain right now.  OmegaGranny sent me a link to a blog post about kids books and end-of-the-world catastrophism, prompted by a write-up in Newsweek.

Eh.

Frankly, the majority of stuff that kids read right now is so fluffy and frilly and substance-less that a few more meaty books here and there don’t bother me.  After all, we’ve got Barbie and Bratz and My Little Pony and CareBears and sweetness and light all over the place.  (Speaking of “sweetness and light”, have you seen JibJab’s take on the latest presidential campaign, in particular the very amusing part about Barack Obama?  And you should read their blog about pulling it all together, too.)

Good old-fashioned disaster lit just takes one back to an earlier, more gritty age, when Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off their toes and heels to try to fit into the glass slipper, and one princess’s evil stepmother was forced to dance at her wedding in iron-hot dancing shoes.  It’s not like catastrophe, disaster, vengeance, killing, and what-not is anything new.  Bambi’s mother, for instance, is shot.  And Disney movies are run through-and-through with dead or absent moms.

Anyway, if the disaster lit wasn’t written specifically for juveniles, you can be assured that the juveniles will just find grown-up disaster lit to read.  Or movies to watch.  Poseidon Adventure, anyone?  Towering Inferno?  On The Beach?  Godzilla?

I think that humans are hard-wired to want drama.  Humans against humans!  All against the backdrop of war! or disaster! You’ve got yer Ulysses.  You’ve got yer Beowulf.  You’ve got yer Bayeaux Tapestry, Don Quixote, Les Miserables, Gone With The Wind, The Day After Tomorrow…  Probably those ancient humans who did the cave paintings in Lescaux had their own version of the disaster/drama/horror story while sitting around fires and eating freshly slain bison.

Right now, my personal desire is for a rockin’, sockin’ disaster novel that ends up with the End Of All Moose, and the Flourishing Of All Veggie Gardens.  I’ll settle, however, for a few books that are due to show up in my mailbox within a week or so, good old-fashioned escapist fantasy and science fiction, replete with–of course–catastrophic end-of-the-world shenanigans…

(ETA:  Ack!  I forgot to mention Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog!  You must check it out within the next two days, before they make you pay for it!)

“Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.”

In the world of fantasy, magic is a mainstay.  Ya gots yer elves, dwarves, wizards, Deep Ancient Evils, warriors, nice nerdy dudes or dudettes who were just living their lives being sucked into a vortex of terror and history, yadda yadda yadda.  And laced through everything is magic.

On the whole–except for elven realms–the magic sets the magic-wielder apart, separates him or her from the mainstream of his culture.  Great power brings great responsibility.  Small power brings mischief.  The Joe Sixpacks of the fantasy worlds eye magicians and wizards askance, probably imbued with the feeling that, hey, if I had magic, I’d use to do give Glenna-down-the-street a whoppin’ case of warts and fleas…so surely–surely–Mr. High-And-Mighty Magician is gonna Do Me Wrong if given half a chance.

In most fantasies, magicians and wizards and suchlike are just plain born that way.  It’s a talent.  Like playing the piano.  Or making artwork.  Or being able to get on a podium and have 50,000 people chanting “Yes, we can!”  You’ve either got it, or you don’t, but if you’ve got it, you’ve got to train it.

These are the norms.

I’ve recently read two fantasies that explore the question of “what if the Price Of Magic were outrageously great?”, and the repercussions of the price.  One went the expected way:  the Price Of Magic is searingly tragic, forever exiling you from mortal humanity, turning you into a snobby elitist who regards mortals as something akin to mayflies.  The other went a totally different path:  Magic is a tool of…something (gods?)…that uses you, and you are physically transformed into something that makes you an object of scorn and pity in your native milieu.

Feast of Souls, by C.S. Friedman, is the first, and the first of the Magister Trilogy.  To work magic, you burn up your life force.  If you’re a nice person who has compassion for the world, you use up your life force and *boom* you die.  If you’re not a nice person, or you have an infinite hunger to keep living, you’ll start using other people’s life force.  (Not a spoiler, since the review on Amazon says this already.)  You become cold, aloof, willing to play with mortal’s lives, countries, history as if it were a toy to amuse you.  You can’t let anyone know what your source of power is, because they’d hunt you down and kill you like a…well…a serial killer.

But, really.  Yeah, yeah, it’s a mighty moral dilemma and all that, and C.S. Friedman does her usual amazing job at telling a bang-up story that grabs you and drags you along.  But, in all honesty:  it’s a price that lots of people would see as tragic but worthy.  You mean I could do magic forever, live forever, so long as I’m some sort of weird psychic vampire that never sees his victim?  Ya sure!  Okay, maybe it’s not as easy as all that, but it’s still monumental, tragic, and in a weird way, empowering.

Then you have the central premise of the Soldier Son Trilogy, by Robin Hobb, which is totally different.  First off, you don’t get to choose to be a magic wielder–the Magic chooses you.  And if you don’t do what It wants, It lays waste to your life, separating you from everything you love, pushing you into paths that It wants.  So first off, you lose your volition.  You don’t get to play around with the magic and become a mysterious, all-knowing figure that wanders the world, solving problems for mere mortals, providing solemn wizardly advice or sage wizardly protection to those who can afford your fees.

If that weren’t bad enough, it makes you fat.  Not a little bit.  A lot.  Because the Magic requires a lot of fuel.  And you find yourself loving food, glorying in the sensuous textures, frantic for food.  But in your world (just like in ours), it’s quite socially acceptable–in fact, almost required–to be scornful of those who are fat, judging them as wastrels, gourmands, gluttons, lazy folk who aren’t willing to take the time and effort and responsibility to keep themselves in trim condition.

We’re talking being the butt of everyone’s jokes, scorned, harassed by your family, dumped by your fiance, outcast, seen as an ineffectual fool by the world at large–all the while you’re coming to grips with being yanked away from your life.

This approach is not seen as tragic but worthy.  In fact, the reviews of the Soldier Son Trilogy are pretty dismal, which I found an interesting reflection of our culture.  My supposition is that not only do the characters in the book find the fat hero worthy of scorn, but so do the readers.

It is a slow series.  There are no “right” people, no “wrong” people.  There’s a clash of cultures, neither of which is wholly admirable (it is a twist on the European colonists marching across the Americas and driving away or killing or assimilating the natives).  The hero is–understandably–pretty obsessive about the whole thing and frequently wildly depressed, because he, too, considers being outrageously fat as being worth less.

I’m eagerly waiting for the second book of Friedman’s trilogy (I love her writing), and waiting–almost grimly–for the third Soldier Son book to come out in paperback.  I just thought it was interesting how they approached the question of paying for the power in such wildly different ways.

(As an aside, it makes me wonder why the idea that “magic has a price” is so ingrained in our culture, and, so far as I can tell, in others as well.)