Why Witches?

 

The Witch's Daughter.  
Frederick Stuart Church, 1881. 

Our Witchy Tips: Secrets from Experienced Witches from Salt 'n' Pepper Books (S.L. & C.L. Vadimsky) is finally published!

Why?

This was Salt 'n' Pepper's first project, laid aside for a time while we hit upon our True Tales of Ghosts and brought that out to a surprisingly appreciative audience. 

From our co-author's point of view, S.L., Witchy Tips began when I texted her to send me her best witchy tips, and she started punching out her witty idioms. (S.L. is also a songwriter and performer, and inherited or learned the snappy humor of generations of Vadimskys.)

Where We Come From

Growing up, I used to say my mother must be a witch. 

She was wickedly smart, even without the opportunity for advanced education or any apparent interest in, (or maybe it was without the time for), recreational reading. 

We all joked about her infallible memory for details, and about her miraculous nose--she could smell scents we didn't notice, and used her nose to detect whether food was fresh or foul, the spaces which needed deep cleaning. That must have directed her day: Follow your nose! what a way to ensure being "present" in the moment.

But that's not why I joked that she was a witch. Her spooky gift was an ability to instantly, on meeting someone, know things about my friends which I hadn't figured out yet. She would remark to me, after meeting someone, and I would say, "Oh. Yes. That is it, just that." And I would discuss the "secret revealed" with the friend, and they would exclaim, and we would laugh about my mother the witch.

Now I know, though, that her gift was only the wisdom of experience. I just hadn't known yet, about the world. I can do all the things now, too.

I never called my mother a witch, to herself. My co-author's mother was more interested than mine in witchy things, when we were cousins growing up. She had a kitchen witch, or a witching ball, or something, in their house. That's how I learned that my mother felt uneasy about witches. She didn't like it. She didn't like references to witches, or talking about witches, or having witchy things around. 

Is it fear of the evil eye? or fear of the accusation of witchcraft? I didn't know.

So I apologize to her for our book's dedication to our wiser Mothers. We meant: all our mothers and grandmothers for generations, including the Earth.  And thanks for the wisdom of old wives, which science is proving true everyday.  I still acknowledge my mother wiser than I, and a saint in heaven.

Witches of Instagram

Witchy began for me earlier during COVID lockdown, when I browsed with fascination the Witches of Instagram. 

I am inclined to follow some media groups for peeks inside countercultural lifestyles, such as homesteading types, thrifty people, homeschoolers. 

Fiction writers, perhaps, love to inhabit other people, as research. Or maybe these aren't other people, they are fantasy selves and lives, if only I could have lived so many lives...

I discovered so many unique witchy devotees, some in heated debate with others. 

Some witches embraced Halloween decorations in their homes on their altars all year long, and Day of the Dead themes and decor, but some reject the brand and the darkness.

There were green witches, herbalists, white and light witches; dark magic witches; wiccans, Satanists, Christians, the reincarnated; sex magic practitioners; pagan priestesses to the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece; witches who enhanced their craft with mind- or mood-altering substances, and purely substance-free teetotallers; witches angry with baby witches, accused by others of gatekeeping; witches of color contesting the cultural appropriation of their religion.  

Many celebrate the moon phases, the zodiac calendar, the pagan Celtic circle of holidays. Some sell fortune telling, or sell spells for love, money, or spite. More sell pretty or dark objects for altars, or for sex play.

I studied the posts and between the lines. I unraveled a thread in the pasts of many, a pain, from some historic trauma, abuse, deprivation, rejection. Some had revolted, now outcast from families who raised them in religious orthodoxy. Some were injured by men, boyfriends, lovers, ex's. 

The women seemed to be confronting the shadow. Some were spellcasting with revenge, to punish, or for the satisfaction of merely laughing about the potential for inflicting revenge. Some assumed a superiority, flaunted sexual desireability, used men as objects in sensual ritual. Some rejected beauty standards and embraced countercultural "ugly", Halloween hags, with altars of dead things and scary things, spotlighting normally secret things, fetishes and spites.

Co-Authors in Dissent

"Flaunt your warts. Witchiness thrives on self-possession."

As Salt and Pepper co-authors, we experienced the dissenting views on witches, in working through agreement on the right words. 

While C.L. researched online communities,"Salt" has just about achieved off-grid ambitions, and was innocent of the popular online witch cultures. At home in the Pacific Northwest, and in rambling independent adventures across the US, S.L. traveled alone, propelled by her own body on a bike. Salt would visit and move on from communes and communities, living off the land, or dancing in sapphic bonfire celebrations, or protesting forest destruction, or healing with foraged herbs, or writing poetry. Mother Earth haunted them.

Many of these women, too, had experienced trauma, and were building safe spaces for peace.

Salt drafts the snappy intuitive one-liner. Pepper tests the words for fitness, and initiates the longer-winded reflections wondering what we really mean? Which become a conversation.

Right from the first "tip" we debated, on behalf of all the witches with whom we had engaged. Does witchiness want humility? audacity? insouciance? 

Illustrations

"Keep your witchiness to yourself. Black hats discouraged."

After much consideration, we mutually agreed on each of the illustrations from the natural world to represent each of the Witchy Tips. While Pepper had observed many witches who embraced Halloween garb and decor, Salt knew more green witches. 

The nature drawings represent witches' connection to earth and practice of earth-based religions. (And they are very cute and funny and expressive. It is just fun to identify with the critters instead of being reminded of humans.)

S.L. advocates for less "light vs. darkness", "good vs. evil" thinking and language generally, less moral judgment. 

Is this why a black hat is discouraged? "Black hat" is also what the bad guys are called, vs. "white hats", in the hacker world. Or is just wiser not to proclaim your side?

Witchy Tips: Secrets from Experienced Witches is a hardcover gift book and journal to buy on Amazon.

Pretending Ancient Egypt

Summer Reading Camp reads Zilpha Keatley Snyder's The Egypt Game 

Our 11 year old reader's school-assigned summer reading for beginning 6th grade is The Egypt Game. My kids half a generation ago read this novel at that age, I remembered as I re-read it. It's a little dated. We still found it to be a fun hook for the upcoming year's social studies curriculum in the ancient civilizations and mythologies.

Here are activities we did to increase our reader's motivation and daily anticipation of what would happen in "Egypt" today!

"Hieroglyphics"

I'm proud to share that our reader was inspired, all on his own, to create a hieroglyphic alphabet to use for secret messages--many chapters before the kids in the book thought of it!

Egyptian Feast

We prepared some Egyptian recipes, in a basic, homemade approximation. I've attempted Northern African cooking and spice mixes before, for a Casablanca Valentine's Day celebration with my grown children. It's one of my son's favorite cuisines, thanks to many wonderful authentic local restaurants. 

Our current reader however is a very picky eater. He refuses new foods presented at home or restaurants. But for some reason at our annual reading camp, he delights in wowing his parents by reporting the novelties he tried with us. 

He liked koshari, and even requested it again the next day! The dish is a warmly spiced comfort food of rice, lentils, pasta and chickpeas. He ate the chicken kebabs and kofta. He liked the pita style bread, and drank tea. He was unsure about dates, and turned down eggplant and hummus.

I wrote a menu in his invented hieroglyphs on an onionskin scroll, and set the table with lots of gold and black, jewel tone colors, urns and pots, pottery plates, "firebowl" candles, orchids, and some totems and stylized sculptures.

Processions, Prostration, Hide and Seek with "Security"

Besides food, we always need lots of physical activity between chapters. 

We held processions. My reader had to learn and act out the word "prostrated".

The little brother of one character carries a security plushie around, an octopus named Security. My reader named our own guest Octavius. We took turns hiding and finding him one day, after the chapters where Security goes missing, and is found in a mysterious place.

Assembling a Pyramid

I provide a square plate as a base and a sack of oranges, and had our reader guess the number of oranges he needed to make a pyramid. He guessed wrong but successfully built a pyramid (three levels took 14 oranges...it will be a math formula to learn eventually...).

Thoth's Choice

In the book, the kids use a taxidermy owl to represent Thoth, whom they employ as an "oracle".

Our table included Thoth, and we sought the oracle's direction as to who should read each of the next chapters, (student aloud, teacher aloud, silent reading, student's choice).

Pharaoh's Tomb puzzle box

Setting the Mood with Puzzles, Movies, Music

Ancient Egypt Artifacts Jigsaw Puzzle:
We're still working on this, after we concluded reading!

Since we were suffering a heat wave, we were indoors in air conditioning for some of our reading.It was helpful to catch some Mummy movie clips about archeologists and tomb raiding imperialists, to understand the costumes the kids in the book sought to achieve, and to see the artwork to understand why the children played at walking in the peculiar way they did.

We even caught a clip of Steve Martin's King Tut routine on Saturday Night Live, and listened to the Bangles performing Walk Like an Egyptian.

In the trick or treat chapter, we shared Halloween candy, (still got leftovers!). We celebrated the final chapter with the Christmas cookies and cider, just like the characters.

Controversies

Banned Book

What a learning opportunity for both of us! I shared with our reader that The Egypt Game is a "banned book" in many places.  

I hadn't anticipated how very challenging it was for our child reader to understand the distinctions between his taste in a book, literary critique of a book, and the removal or destruction of a book to render it unavailable or illegal to read. This made for the most interesting discussions, always asking for him to explain the "why" of his opinion.

I was even more surprised to learn that our student, who can so faithfully recite the Bill of Rights after learning about the American Revolution in school this past year, had not understood that "free speech" may include books and writings.

I did reflect on the question of cultural appropriation in our activities or even in the novel. The book was a school assignment, not our choice. We had some fun and participated in the children's awe while they engaged in their pretend play. We playfully introduced the popular cultural perception of the ancient history and civilization, and affirmed that Egypt the place, culture and people are with us today. I used a history timeline book and even trusty World Book.

My daughter as a tot used to play the Catholic Mass with stuffed animals and dolls, and, once reading, wrote her own additional book of the Bible. I could see she was learning. 

We did our best.

I neglected to include a viewing of The Prince of Egypt, which I haven't seen.  I may check it out. What do you think? I hope you enjoyed these resources ideas. 

I wonder if the 6th grade will be visiting The Metropolitan Museum of Art, as my kids' grade did?

Midwinter Drama

A Theater Mystery 

Author's Notes regarding Local and Personal History

Third book in The Freep Investigates Mysteries Series is finally out, ready early for next Christmas: Midwinter's Drama - A Theater Mystery Novel, for middle grades, teens and tweens.

The kids join a community theater production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, set in Midwinter. Like the rest of the Scooby-Doo-style series, there's a ghost story in the history of the one-room schoolhouse now used as a little theater, and then strange mishaps haunt the production. The Freep reporters have to discover the secret cause now, or the show will be cancelled!

The Shakespeare original is sufficient inspiration for all kinds of stories, but these author's notes capture some of the local and personal history behind the fictional Midwinter's Drama. 

I Was in a Play

If opportunity presents, participate in a live theater performance—onstage or backstage, in your school or community, or as the audience!

I was a tall child, almost always the tallest in the class. Everyone wanted to be the tallest, and they were always measuring themselves against me to check. My best buddy then was small and cute. Teachers called us "Mutt and Jeff". Mutt and Jeff were a pair of physically mismatched friends in one of the first newspaper daily comic strips.

When I was in fifth grade, about ten years old, I had a starring role in a school play. It was a musical, The Seven Old Ladies of Lavender Town. (The "Operetta in Two Parts" by H.C. Bunner is in the public domain and currently available as a free download from Forgotten Books.)

I volunteered to play the part of The Duchess in the school musical. My best friend volunteered to be The Fairy. But then we found out that one person had to play both parts, because the Duchess is revealed to be the Fairy in disguise. My friend really wanted the part. The teacher assigned both roles to me, figuring I could play the fairy more easily than my short friend could play the duchess. She had to play one of the old ladies.

My costume was simple. I wore a pleated gauze skirt and a satin blouse. It was my Easter dress. Because I had big feet, (adult size), and because grown up women did not wear flat shoes that year, my dress shoes had heels. The only thing I remember about the play was how the audience gasped when the curtains opened to reveal that I was really the Fairy! The transformation was marked only by a cape made of lace with glittering threads, worn around the shoulders of my same dress.

I tell this story because of the cat fight in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream between Helena and Hermia, the tall and small jokes. The theme sparks a subplot within Midwinter's Drama, where everyone is still growing, and adolescent performers may hide budding anxieties about size, shape, and competition for attention.

Both my own children performed in their middle school musicals. My daughter didn't get the lead she read for, but as one of the more mature looking girls, played one of the mothers.

My son and his buddy decided in eighth grade, the year they were graduating to go up to high school, that they would do every school activity offered before they left "childhood" behind. They were awarded very funny roles in a musical which played more like a comedy variety show. Their ridiculous costumes, (involving a farmer and his pig), were a perfect fit for their spontaneous shenanigans.

My daughter eventually performed in multiple productions, as cast or crew—even as Dramaturg—in college theater. We got to meet theater people!

The farm next door

The Little Red Schoolhouse

One Room Schoolhouse

As a child, my daughter had participated in a youth community theater program run by a warm and talented young adult student named Miranda. Miranda's teenaged brother helped out too. My kid performed as Amponsah, the narrator of a series of Anansi stories.

The troupe rehearsed and performed in our town's Little Red Schoolhouse, built in 1873. This schoolhouse was the first in the area built to serve as a tuition-free public school following New Jersey's 1871 Free School Bill. The new law made public school free, with compulsory attendance, nine months a year, for children ages 5 to 18; it established a school tax to pay for the schools. The one room served grades 1-8 for two local municipalities. It served as a school until 1950. The building is now used as a community resource. The schoolhouse is next to preserved farmland and across from the flood plain where cows graze.

When little "Amponsah" grew up, she worked for some time as a historic interpreter playing, among other roles, the schoolteacher in the historic one-room Bunker Hill School, relocated to and preserved at the Red Mill Museum Village in Clinton, New Jersey.

Ice Skating

When we had winters here, our family and friends skated outdoors on local ponds and even on our own backyard, which used to flood and then freeze into a glassy freeway!

Author's Brother on Frozen Yard

Homeschool

Before I even had children, I was interested in the homeschooling movement. My children did ultimately attend fine schools, after preschool education at home. I remained involved with homeschoolers through my family law work, through friendships with some of my favorite families, and as a children's librarian.

All these experiences contribute to Midwinter's Drama, but this story is fiction. Not even the schoolhouse in the story is identical to the real one, but an imaginary composite of many American one-room schoolhouses. The children in the Freep mysteries are mostly homage to the children, ethnically and economically diverse, whom I taught in church classes, in schools and at the library.

Shakespeare for You

A Midsummer Night's Dream is often children's first exposure to Shakespeare. They may have to read it, in middle school or high school English classes; or maybe at an even younger age, they have the opportunity, with their family, to see the play performed. Perhaps the fairies are considered appealing to children, or the themes of love, law, and competition, suitable for teens.

My family has seen the play many times, performed and set in both Midsummer, and Midwinter, in ancient Greece, or in Victorian England.

I hope the summary, quotations, and explorations of its plot in Midwinter's Drama: A Theater Novel help young readers enjoy and understand the play.

You can find and read the entire play for free online at Folger Shakespeare Library.

Other Shakespeare enjoyable for children, (at least my children fondly remember these!), include, believe it or not: King Lear, (there was a storm outside the theater just as the storm raged onstage, and my little boy especially enjoyed the Fool); and The Tempest, with shipwreck, sorcery, monsters, and love, on a desert island.

Teens are often required to read or see Romeo and Juliet. Also popular are Macbeth, with its witches and war, and Hamlet, with its ghost.

In books of poetry for children, Shakespeare's is often included. In third grade, my son had to memorize a poem. He was inspired by this one from Shakespeare's Richard II:

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands,
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England…

 

Now that gives me a pang of nostalgia for national pride. 

May all my readers be blessed, in sleep, in dreams, and on waking.

Guilty Pleasures: Watching Evil; Reading Magic

 

“Artists are tricky fellows, sir, forever reshaping the world according to some design of their own,” said Strange. “Indeed they are not unlike magicians in that.”

    --Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Evil; Truthseekers; Bodkin;

and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, the Book is Better

frog at night

Why to Watch My Show: Evil

My guilty pleasure is watching the series Evil.

Even friends whose tastes usually differ from mine, watch this religiously.  The whole series has just concluded and all episodes are available to watch. The series is from Robert and Michelle King, who also made The Good Wife, (I haven’t seen it).

I originally watched a few episodes privately, just in the background while I was doing some household chore. That’s when I try out silly shows my family would not appreciate, I just put them on for company. Then this one left the platform I was watching on, or we canceled that streaming option, and I didn’t see it again.

When I found it again I shared it with my family during prime time viewing, and  it became My Show. My grandmother had “her serial”; remember when women would have a soap they preferred and would put it on for company while ironing or something? Evil is “my show”. My comfort viewing. 

My multi-generational adult family enjoys Evil with me.

I describe it as cozy paranormal. Cozy exorcism. It reminds me of X Files, probably for the chemistry, and the almost-humorous plots. Other reviewers have likewise referenced the X Files comparison.

We love it because it is ridiculous. The demons are mostly, of course, ridiculous. The evil antagonists are very, very funny. We almost always chuckle out loud, in every episode. All of the actors are perfect individually, and in their chemistry together. The nods and winks of tropes for the audience, in contrast with the deadpan earnestness of the characters, tickle me to death.

Three “assessors” work for the Church investigating various alleged supernatural phenomena, most often to rule out demonic activity.

The Assessors

The team includes two nonbelievers: a petite cute-sexy forensic psychologist, Kristen, and a snarky yet gentle tech scientist, Ben. They partner with David, a smoldering-sexy and sincere priest. 

Kristen and family:

Kristen’s husband is usually away running a mountain climbing expedition, and he dabbles in Eastern spiritual practices. She herself was raised Catholic but has firmly rejected faith.

Their four entertaining daughters all always talk simultaneously in a wonderfully chaotic babble, and for some reason attend Catholic school, I suppose because they live in New York where it’s a common private school choice for educational reasons.

I love the Catholic church-adjacent context of the series, the context of so many Americans who left the church but have some fondness for and aggravation with its markers. 

Kristen’s mother Sheryl becomes a significant, addictive character, sucked into performing something as a double agent between her role as grandma to Kristen’s kids, and a girlfriend/employee to demons and participant in truly evil practices.

Ben:

Ben, the tech expert, has rejected his family’s Muslim faith. His sister remains devout even while she is a talented scientist, whom he often consults for her superior skills. 

David:

David as a novice to the priesthood is fighting to maintain his own faith, among cynical priests and institutional church hierarchy, and the affectionate ridicule of his science-worshiping friends.

A compelling theme is how the three friends accept and love each other even with such core disagreements.

David’s quarters are eventually inhabited by the temptation of a demon in Kristen’s form, exaggeratedly seductive. Kristen faces her own temptations, mutual and otherwise.

So many entertaining characters:

Leland is a wonderfully funny, dorky yet cunning demon in human form. 

Dr. Kurt Boggs, a psychiatrist therapist,  is such a well-intentioned good man that I root for him even when he succumbs to temptation in practicing dark arts; he just seems so inherently of good will, an innocent.

Sister Andrea portrays the no-nonsense nun heroine, the most gifted vanquisher of evil, condemned by the banal male church hierarchy to clean and launder, keep quiet and get out of the way. 

I might have picked Sister Andrea as my favorite character, but I can’t pick just one, they are all my favorites! This is my show! 

Action!

Hilariously, Sister Andrea, Kristen and Sheryl, each individually, often confront and sometimes outwit the cabals of corporate or church chauvinism.

The episodes each address a “chapter” of a pop-up book about evil, the kind of “guilty pleasure” kids might like to scare themselves with. Often the supernatural event assessed begins with the daughters’ schoolyard games and legends or internet memes.

Each situation revolves around a fear, like night terrors, dolls, elevators, cops, fire, the IRS, UFOs, sex, parenting, silence, death. 

Warning: the material gets a bit spicier with progressive seasons. The first season is pretty tame, with a demon that’s just a little scary; a family with kids could manage it. It’s a grown-up show in subsequent seasons, not as sexually graphic as most streaming shows but some episodes have darker contexts. The scary monsters don’t get worse, those are usually just funny. 

A conspiracy plot involving, among other evils, a potential Antichrist baby, plays out over the subsequent seasons.

Who can resist layers of Vatican secret armies, or the mob-like 66 "families" ? Best of all every episode pairs our phobias with some real or almost-real science or human cultural phenomenon. 

I join the Evil legions who are sad it's over, for now. 

church

Truthseekers, a short paranormal series

This streaming series earned our delighted chuckles over its portrayal of some current cultural phenomena. I know these people!

The big guy in his watch cap, beard and shorts, holds a tech day job involving installation and troubleshooting for WiFi customers of some cable company. His sidegig is paranormal investigator, with detection gear of his own invention, and his own podcast channel.

The online cosplay makeup influencer is an obsessive fan convention devotee. She meticulously creates prize-winning costumes in which to attend an annual con. Though she bravely attempts every year, she phobically fails to muster appearing in person.

The cranky, aging father-in-law, a target of jokes for his comedic senior habits, stubbornly advances his own demise by embracing a fraudster.

A movie fan’s inside joke: Malcolm McDowell plays this aging parent, and the ultimate conflict in the conspiracy plot incorporates nods to his role in A Clockwork Orange.

Bodkin

Bodkin is billed as a comedy and a mystery. True crime podcasters and a transplanted native Irish journalist head to Ireland to investigate a years old cold case disappearance from a Samhain festival, the Celtic foundation for Halloween. Isn’t that enough to make you watch? 

[Note: If it matters to you, there is a gratuitous sexual encounter. We fast-forwarded past it. Usually I just turn it off, but I was committed enough to the series to watch the rest!]

library magic

The Book is Better: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

It is 19th century England. "Magic” is now a distant chapter within England’s glorious history. Current “magicians” are academics, the men who study the history.

However, a very few are discovered, hidden away in a remote country house, or unbeknown even to themselves, or disguised amongst the common charlatans who perform tricks, who do have the ability to practice the old magic. 

The government enlists one such magician, Mr Norrell, and an ambitious upstart studying with him, Jonathan Strange, to aid them in prosecuting the Napoleonic war.

In support of his own ambition, Norrell aids an important personage whose new wife is gravely ill. He summons, with distaste, a malicious fairy king to resurrect Lady Pole from death. 

As I watched a few episodes on TV, the fairy and his realm seemed too dark and frightening to me, with the intensity of a serial killer, though he had a great look.

The fairy is known as a “gentleman with thistle-down hair”. He wears an odd green. He does awful things to furnish his parties and parades with humans he finds charming.

I didn’t continue the streaming series, too dread-inducing! I was frightened when the bells would ring to announce the intrusion of the fairy. However, the characters were so interesting that I decided to try reading the book, and I love it! 

In Susanna Clarke's book, even though the effect of the fairy’s magic is so unsettling and the source of much despair, the fairy himself comes across less as having “evil” intent, and more as a selfish, unrestrained innocent, narcissistic the way I imagine fairies, and as they are commonly portrayed in literature.

For readers who avoid fantasy, or for readers who crave fantasy, this book wasn't really what you may expect. I read it as more literary, more allegory, more like, Pilgrim's Progress or Canterbury Tales? Like these, some chapters read like a digression wherein someone tells a story within the story.

As a reader and writer, I especially loved these themes and devices of the book:

• In a Jane Austenesque or Dickensian way, there are so many funny social observations, memeable quotes, by the narrator, or mouthed by characters oblivious to the sense we are making of their words.

• The women in the story are the intelligent, practical ones. They are the source of Strange’s ambition, and the objects of the fairy’s desire for them as playthings and ornaments. They are victims of magic. They strike me as captive muses for the men.

• The magicians are like mad scientists of our own time, inventing means of using awesome powers in nature to alter the natural world and human relations.

• I took the contrast between the academic magicians and the practicing magicians to be a commentary on critics vs. creators. 

• I similarly read the contrast between Norrell and Strange as commentary on talent vs. training and effort, or maybe between gatekeepers and artists in the wild:

• Mr Norrell assiduously studies his craft for ages;
• he scoops up every book on magic for his own personal library and to prevent other’s access, to maintain his status as hierophant;
• and limits his work to historic rules made by prior masters.
• Jonathan Strange happens upon his natural gifts when casting about for something to do as a profession at his wife’s urging,
• and his inherent talent makes him a greater magician.

• Stephen Black, a servant, learns of his past as the nameless son of an enslaved woman. Will he vanquish the thistle-haired gentleman to become a new kind of king, who serves his subjects rather than his own whims? 

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is a magical work, and the book is better, (though I read that the author was on set in the making of the series). I look forward to reading the author’s second book, Piranesi, said to be very different from this one, and published in 2021. I understand the decades between debut and second novel are due to the author’s illness.

If you read it, do you agree with my understanding?

“It is the task of the Book to bear the words. Which I do. It is the task of the Reader to know what they say.”

Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (p. 836). Bloomsbury Publishing: 2004. Kindle Edition. 

The Water; and, In Ascension by Martin MacInnes

 The Water

Tell me. Is it just me? What is your relationship with Ocean? Is it memory, or inheritance?

A New Jersey beach under a full moon

A friend said, “I just love the sea, I just feel the need to be by the sea.” I react with surprise because, don’t we all? 

Another says of a mutuaL relation, “Well, she just loves the shore, so of course she should get to live there.” Doesn’t everyone? Isn’t that why coastline real estate with an ocean view is unattainable except by the wealthiest?

I rarely speak of my own longing because I have always assumed an intense relationship with the sea is inherent in being human, and that even the landlocked would feel the pull if they ever approached, saw it, smelled it. 

My friend who prefers seaside vacations suggests it is our happy memories of fun times with family when we vacationed at the shore growing up.

I don’t know, I don’t believe my feeling for the ocean is merely a matter of taste. For those who experience feeling an ocean connection, (don’t we all?), then I surmise it is a very deep history in us, archetypal. A friend at the pool talks about her love for the water, and says it’s genetic; her father was in the Navy. I see in her perhaps the Irish, and the Vikings, so I wonder if it goes back even further. My own ancestors crossed the Atlantic, all from places of Eastern European mountains, forests, farms--and all with beachy coastlines--the Adriatic, Baltic, Black Seas.

It’s not just wading as a child or building sand castles, or the fondness for long days outdoors with parents and siblings, meeting new playmates on the beach, splashing, sunburned skin, gritty bathing suits, boardwalk rides, lights and music out after dark, treats only eaten there, ceaseless wind, shells, seaweed smells, fish and sea monsters.

For me at least, it’s something bigger than happy memories. The sea is something bigger. 

As a baby reader, my favorite book was a funny one guessing the creature, (a whale): “There’s a hole in my head.” And my next favorite, the abridged Moby Dick my mother read to us, with gory illustrations. And Jules Verne, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea! Swiss Family Robinson, abandoned in a shipwreck on a desert island! Treasure Island. 

I grew up Mid-Atlantic coast. I loved any artifacts of fishermen and sailors and pirates, naval ships and submarines, storms and shipwrecks, marine animals, driftwood and egg cases. Mermaids, silkies. Nymphs and gods.

And next: remember paperback romances sold on a rack in the drugstore? They weren’t smutty yet; anything resembling the spicy romance market currently sold online, would assuredly have been in paper covers behind the counter with the men’s magazines. On the drugstore rack, with the comic books, I found a romance about a whaler’s “widow”, nineteenth century dread and desire anxiously interpreting the sea. I fell in love, with New England. 

And I grew into multiple readings of the big Moby Dick, and obsessions with Gloucestermen and the Perfect Storm, Jaws, The Deep, The Abyss, Titanic museums. And the something bigger: it’s something about awe, isn’t it. I became a science fiction reader and viewer, it was in the culture, with the space program. Space horror. The Twilight Zone and Outer Limits. The spooky fun house down the shore on the boardwalk was made over into scenes of abandoned astronauts on stark hostile planets in the vacuum. I’ll never forget it.

I also love John Carpenter’s The Thing. I yearn for Antarctica like the ocean, even though it’s frozen. I could easily live confined in a trailer in a huge hostile winter marine environment, doing science at the interface.

Ocean, mountains, glaciers, the appeal is immensity and power. I want to be one with it.  Maybe it is like my fear of heights, which I experience as an urge to throw myself off the precipice. Sylvia Plath walking deep into the waves? Tolkien’s Western lands across the sea, the end of the elves? More like: the experience of certain music which moves one so deeply. The experience of church. The awesomeness, the awfulness, of an all powerful god. The sinking of ships, twisters, earthquakes. Pinocchio inside a whale.

I remember the shore as a teenager, the deliciousness of being there in the skin. We didn’t need to eat when we were at the beach. Something else filled us. The sun, salt, wind, waves, our only nourishment, no need to leave, dawn to dusk on the beach. I know that if I were there on this very day, for weeks, at most all I’d ever want is a hot cup of coffee.

In addition to The Perfect Storm and Apollo 13, one of my favorite movies is Blueback. It is the fantasy environmentalist beachside living I would choose, had it occurred to me I could choose it. I recommend it because the diving scenes are long and relaxing, soothing. I still sleep best on sheets printed with sharks, with underwater marine footage on TV.

A boyfriend taught me the shocking strength of men, there at the shore, when he picked me up under one arm and ran across the beach. Once, when I was a teen on a date, I had to be saved by two lifeguards, when caught in a rip tide. The guard was so strong and spoke to me so gently until his tension came through in his voice, when he cursed at the other guard who threw a flotation device at my head. I was so embarrassed that I ran off when I hit the sand, without thanking him. My white bikini was transparent when soaked, plus I’d stupidly floundered into the risk zone, at the tide’s mercy, and so I had risked their lives too.  I wish I could thank him, I’ve prayed my gratitude many times, you strong young men. I apologize for my foolish self, who invited the risk when I put myself in the situation. In those days we always apologized, too, for putting ourselves in the situation, when we suffered the force of a young man’s strength. Whether that force is or is not like the risk of the sea is for another conversation.

I chose a college with the requirement that it have a Semester at Sea opportunity with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Would I major in marine biology, or English? English and poli sci it was. I rejected fields demanding much mathematics. I completed two semesters of core Oceanography, weakly. Friends teased it wasn’t the poetry on the beach I’d anticipated. (All those arrows and currents! Now I wish I’d paid more attention, whenever I am impressed by marine navigators in movies.) I didn’t do the sea semester, calculating that I wasn’t from the economic class with sailing experience, or extra funding, (a la Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws).Mostly I recognized that maybe I tend more toward contemplation, armchair adventure, than action, and doubting I had the physical energy for deck-swabbing. (Though I am never seasick! That’s DNA!)

I never dream of flying; my dreams are often of floating in the open sea. A Jungian friend said an inclination for water rather than the sky was about inner space over extroversion; but what of my mirror of the ocean, in outer space?  I always believed I’d end up living at the shore, but I’ll blame my failure on both my generation and my personal character: we were the first after our homemaker mothers, suddenly expected to compete in men’s professions. I didn’t think about how to make dreams into goals to be achieved. I always floated, waiting to see what opportunities happened by, more a Jane Austen character when I should have been Horatio Alger. So I haven’t made my home on the beach, though the shore is still a short drive from home, a day trip. And for when I couldn’t get there, I joined our local astronomical observatory on top of a forested mountain. But I found that after all, stargazing is not quite the same as the tidal tug on me. Our home planet, after all, is the blue one. 

In Ascension, by Martin MacInnes

I thought this book would be sci-fi. It won the Arthur C. Clarke award this year. It was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year. To my surprise and pleasure, the main character is an ocean explorer who ends up on an astronaut mission. In Ascension is a compelling read but its plot arc and meaning are not obvious ones, and I don't promise I really get it. I avoid speculation here about what happens at the end to avoid spoilers.

Because of the deep connection between humans and all life, and our origins under the sea or in the furthest reaches of outer space, the story interweaves complex and mysterious family relations of two sisters, their abusive father and distant mother. The characters never really manage even in extreme travel or isolation to get far away from that family entanglement.

The family are Dutch, with their national legacy of life reclaimed from the sea. Narrator Leigh discovers a passion for swimming further and further out. Under the surface she abruptly encounters what will be her life’s cause:

…I realised, suddenly, with appreciation, that absolutely everything around me was alive. There was no gap separating my body from the living world. I was pressed against a teeming immensity, every cubic millimetre of water densely filled with living stuff. These organisms were so small I couldn’t see them, but somehow I felt their presence, their fraternity, all around me. I didn’t look through the water towards life, I looked directly into water-life, a vast patchwork supporting my body, streaming into my nostrils, my ears, the small breaks and crevices in my skin, swirling through my hair and entering the same eyes that observed it. In what felt like minutes, but must have been only seconds, I saw a completely different world, a place of significance and complexity, an almost infinite number of independent organisms among which I floated like a net, scooping up untold creatures with every minor shift and undulation of my body.

When she returns to her bundle of clothes and dresses, “I felt I was only now inhabiting a personality, that until I entered these pre-set shapes I was diaphanous, and this form did not necessarily match up with who, or what, I was.”

As a marine microbiologist, Leigh joins an expedition where she and other divers explore an unimaginably deep subterranean trench and hydrothermal vent. A discovery of ancient bacteria ultimately weaves into Leigh’s work on growing DNA enhanced algae for a food source for space exploration. When a technology breakthrough finally enables faster and farther human space travel, Leigh trains astronauts in her algae agriculture, not only for food but for the benefit of gardening for their sanity on long voyages.

When a mysterious communication signal is received from the outer edges of the solar system, an investigatory mission embarks, including Leigh.

Ascension is a secret island, a place where even the weeds pushing up through pavement are a "miracle", where Leigh’s sister Helena attempts to investigate, with another relative of the crew, the status of the space mission.She further explores their shared history.  Like the sea turtles Helena sees there, with their “amphibious wisdom of 100-million-year-old eyes”, we have no option not to come home.

I did enjoy reading this book, but felt disappointed afterward, I don’t know why; I think most science fiction ends in some level of disappointment for me. Maybe I want to keep going somewhere else. 

Upon reading In Ascension, I did look at the world with new eyes, maybe akin to how it feels for astronauts to see our blue home in the window set against the blackness of space: a novel sense of relatedness with all inhabitants, and a protectiveness of the world. 

Leigh’s mother had once told her, “Everyone is a parent. That’s what getting old is: catastrophic senescence. That’s what dying is. You become a parent. You fall into the stream.” (I often joke, as a literal parent of children, that we are the dead wood from which fungus springs.) I like MacInnes's take on our universal parentage of what comes next.

I read his lesson about whale breath and navigation as a personal directive to continue exploring the world with language as long as I am breathing:

“...[W]hen whales rise out of the water to gather breath they incidentally collect images – terrestrial and astronomical markers – that become essential in their long migrations. Breath is an opportunity, and whales registering constellations is no more outlandish than the language we carve from air.”

The Sea Spicer

Another beach in New Jersey