While taking the dog out for her nightly last night I noticed a “star” madly twinkling, fairly low in the west. It seemed almost to be changing colors, flickering between red and a greenish-white. I watched it for a minute or two, thinking it must be a distant aircraft flying directly away from me, but no, it didn’t go away. Intrigued, I got out my 10×25 field binoculars. They showed what looked like a red point of light flickering around a greenish-white point—very hard to distinguish though, given they were hand-held.

My best guess is I saw a star or planet in near alignment with a more distant star, and the flickering was a result of refraction as it sank lower behind the humid atmosphere. But I’m not good at reading star charts and would appreciate further thoughts.

This was between 10pm and 10:30pm HST, August 18. Approx lat/long 20.90 156.43

Twitter has been much in the news lately. I opened up an account back in May with my daughter’s encouragement, used it for a few days, then allowed it to languish–a well-known behavioral pattern, certainly. At any rate, I took it up again several weeks ago, and have been enjoying it. For me, it serves much the same purpose as Mrs. Weasley’s clock.

For those who read Harry Potter, this needs no explanation, but for those who don’t, Mrs. Weasley is a character who possesses a wall clock with many hands, one for each member of her immediate family. The hands point out the current location of each individual, or whether they are in danger (“mortal peril”). For me, Twitter is something like that. As people “tweet” you can see at a glance that they are accounted for, that things are going all right (or not), and get an idea of what is going on in their day.

As you may guess, I mostly follow the young ‘uns of my acquaintance as they travel and work on careers and discover interesting things. But I’m also very slowly expanding that to include more distant people I’ve known. What do I gain? A fuzzy, never-overwhelming glimpse into what others are up to. It shakes up the day a little, and reminds me that I should be getting things done too.

This is a story with no conclusion; it is just a description of an odd coincidence that still leaves me puzzled.

Recently I re-discovered a CD that was released in 2000 by Nina Gordon, a singer I had never heard of before (or frankly, since). My daughter had purchased it because we were both entranced by a song on it, “Tonight And The Rest Of My Life.”

Move on a few weeks in time…my daughter, avidly interested in Greek mythology, is reading an English translation of “Gods and Heroes” by Gustav Schwab. The book she holds in her hands was purchased by my great aunt, in 1946, as a Christmas gift for her husband. It is one of the very few items from my family that I possess.

So what’s the connection? On page thirty-nine, Zeus has decided to wipe out the human race. My daughter reads the following “[Zeus] was just about to do this by scourging all the earth with lightning, when he held back for fear the sky might catch fire and burn the axis of the world.” She is astonished and comes to show me the quote, because in Gordon’s song, the fourth and fifth lines are
“And the sky might catch on fire
And burn the axis of the world.”

Well, we were very impressed that the songwriter – apparently Gordon herself – had seemingly read the very same book, and been fully taken by the imagery, but we were more impressed that the allusion was revealed to us by such a slim chance.

The meaning of the song is open to interpretation, but the chapter the quote comes from is “Pyrrha and Deucalion.” It is a tale of the Flood, only this one is caused by the Greek gods, who are disgusted at the state of humanity.

So today, instead of doing the useful things I had planned, I let myself be distracted, and spent some time with Google book search exploring some of the other song lyrics [ link ]. Here’s what I found:

On page thirty-seven, the afterlife of the Greek heroes is described as being “…on the Islands of the Blest gleaming in the dark sea.” In the song we have:
“Gleaming in the dark sea
I’m as light as air”

Again on page thirty-nine we have “…only the south wind was allowed to issue forth. Down to earth he flew with dripping wings, shrouded in darkness as black as pitch.” In the song we have:
“Down to the earth I fell
With dripping wings”

On page forty, at the height of the flood: “Everything was sea, shoreless sea.” In the song:
“I open up my eyes
I realize that
Everything is shoreless sea”

And then on page fifty-five, in a completely different story, the tale of Europa, “Soon the land vanished from sight, the sun set, and in the vague shimmer of night, the girl saw nothing but waves and stars.” In the song:
“Everything is waves and stars
The universe is resting in my arms”

What does it all mean? As I said at the start, this is a story without a conclusion. A small part of me is troubled by it, wondering if this is beyond fair use, but mostly I feel the song is a beautiful rendition and interpretation of imagery and concepts that begin in the book.

I am curious to know if the allusions were deliberate, or if they emerged from the stew of the unconscious. I think most writers must worry about this at times – I certainly have – that something read years before might suddenly appear in our own work, and we have no idea it wasn’t original to us. Ah well, life is full of risk!

Oh, and one more coincidence…according to Wikipedia the Nina Gordon album was recorded on Maui, where I live.

I confess an addiction to reading news stories online. I spend far too much time every day browsing the New York Times, the Honolulu Advertiser, Newsweek, Time, and a few other websites… time that could be spent a little more productively, no doubt.

What I really can’t figure out is why I still glance at the comments that often accompany articles. The NY Times is the exception. They must edit the comments they get, because most of them seem reasonably intelligent. Newsweek, Time, and the Honolulu Advertiser though… ick. Glancing at their comments generally feels like tip-toeing through sewer water. Ninety-percent of it seems composed of insults and assorted name-calling, unreasoned hostility, baseless gossip, or diatribes that don’t address in any way the subject of the article (if we can assume some intentionality, I have to suppose these last are aimed at an earlier commentator, though I don’t wade that far in).

And yet I look! I guess I’m always hoping to see that things have improved, but that never happens.

I have some scenarios in my head about the people posting. At the Advertiser I think of those two old guys from the muppets, who sit in the theater audience lobbing insults at everything that happens on the stage – (some of you might be old enough to remember the muppets…) – only at the Advertiser the hecklers are a lot nastier. They come across as people who just don’t have lives, pitching shots because they don’t have anything else to do.

At the big magazines it feels like a different crowd. Here there just has to be a huge population of political hacks whose job it is (paid no doubt) to slime and smear.

Web 2.0 may still be a big deal, but for me it serves as a great demonstration of the value of a good editor.

Of course none of this is intended to discourage people from commenting here… after all, I get to approve all comments before they appear!

Update: same subject, much more funny writing:
“Local Idiot To Post Comment On Internet”

I won’t be coy. I loved this movie. Yes, I know all the reasons I’m not supposed to like it. It’s violent. It’s callous. It glorifies a warrior culture. It overlooks historical inconveniences. The racial casting has to be controversial.

Doesn’t matter. 300 is myth, and myth is what I love. It’s what I strive to write, albeit a bit removed, from a softer perspective. Myth is imbued with elemental meaning. It’s filled with absolutes. It’s beautiful and hideous at once, with very little in-between. 300 has all of this. It knows its purpose.

So I’ve spent the last day ruminating over why elemental movies like this appeal to me — The Lord of the Rings, Gladiator, The Last Samurai, Braveheart — to name a few. There are probably many reasons, but the one I want to pick out is the one of character – all these stories deal with characters who possess, or learn to possess, a profound discipline, and a personal strength to contend with pain and fear, even unto the fear of death, all in the defense of an ideal.

This is so much more interesting to me than the petty trivialities of the tabloids, and the endless novels that seem written to support them.

Why do mythic stories mean so much – whether they take the form of historical tales, science fiction, or fantasy? What do we gain from them? “Adolescent wish fulfillment” is often the academic explanation – but it’s a silly and insulting answer. Obviously none of us here are ever going to have to stand in a narrow ravine and face an overwhelming enemy, or be asked to strap on a sword and ride forth into the wilderness in defense of home and freedom. Yet that we understand why someone would do such a thing gives depth to our lives, even if the biggest threat we face is the idiot on the highway during the morning commute. If we understand honor in mythic stories, we also understand honor in our own lives – or loyalty, truth, freedom, strength, respect, responsibility – the classic virtues. If our emotional center exists in that other world, surely it will be reflected in this one?

Certainly, we could use a bit more of the classic virtues in our daily lives. In 300 there is a very profound and deliberate contrast between the clean, strong lives of the Spartans, idealized in the relationship between King Leonidas and his wife, and the self-indulgent, drug-addicted, overly-decorated debauchery of the enemy Persians. Guess which society more closely resembles the “ideals” of modern American existence? (Hint: “Spartan” is not a powerful advertising term.)

So let the critics frown upon 300. The rest of us can grasp the difference between myth and reality, and take the best of each.

I’ve lived on Maui a long time. I’m used to it. The resident population here is perhaps 140,000. It’s a small town compared to the 900,000-plus resident population of Honolulu — which in turn is small compared to the great assemblage that is Los Angeles — almost 10 million people in Los Angeles County according to the US Census Bureau.

This meditation on relative scale was inspired by a recent trip to Palm Springs via the Los Angeles airport. We hit the freeways in the late afternoon on a Friday — need I say more? There must have been more people in their cars, trying to get elsewhere, than exist on the entire island of Maui. (Did I used to call that little slow-down on the way into town “bad traffic”?)

My day job involves work on a tourist-oriented website, so the first thing that occurred to me was what a tiny percentage of Los Angeles-alone we would have to attract to be a raging success.

My next thought was what a tiny percentage of Los Angeles-alone an author, or even a genre, would have to attract to be a raging success. Anyone trying to sell anything must entertain the same thought. It’s the million dollar marketing question.