a brief glimpse of Nanning

There really isn't much to say about the remainder of my journey through China on July 13th. I managed—just barely—to make my connection in Kunming at around four o'clock. Even so had the flight not been delayed, I'd have missed it. As I sprinted through the airy, crowded, never-ending concourse I found myself wishing that I could've taken photos of this amazing airport and the mist-shrouded, awe-inspiring mountains surrounding it. 

The transfer at Nanning was annoying. I had to go through security for the fourth freakin' time. The airport was ancient, the roof leaky, the rafters rusty, the X-ray machines antique, the employees confused and overawed by the sudden influx of people, and the rain warm, heavy, and wet. It came bucketing down on us during our bus transfers to and from the terminal as though to give us a little preview of Indochina. 

Let's just say that I got in to Hanoi in the late afternoon after the last hour-long hop across the Vietnamese border. I peered hawkishly out of the porthole and saw a fair verdant country dotted with stands of banana trees, hummocky hills with tousled hair, and rice paddies the color of chai. It didn't look too different from Korea from the air, just wetter. 

What really astounded me were the clouds: heaps of low-lying cumulonimbus, heavily pregnant with rain and choking up the airways at 10,000 feet. Spires, pillars, minarets, enormous castles with crenelated keeps and battlements, men-o'-war with all sails flying, puffy white battleships with jagged conning towers, swirls of ice cream with Reddi-wip on top, thundering stampedes of gout-stricken buffalo and cancerous bull rhinos in full gallop. I saw all these shapes and more in the packed skies as we descended into Hanoi.

30 Days to a Better Man, Day 5: cultivate your gratitude

There's two parts to this challenge. Part 1 is to cultivate your personal gratitude. This means making a list of ten things that you're grateful for. The trick is to not be thankful for superficial or general things, like health, family, a good job, and so on. No, the idea here is to dig under the layers and find things, little things, that you're grateful for on a daily basis. So, without further ado, here is my spirited attempt at such a litany:

10 THINGS I'M GRATEFUL FOR:

• sunsets - Heaven knows the universe doesn't need to light up the atmosphere with all those reds and yellows and oranges and pinks, but it does, and I appreciate it. 
• Korean immigration laws - Thank goodness there's a country that lets me live in it and pretend to be a professor and teach its students and pay me through the nose, because without it my dreams and I would have been sunk long ago.
• having a job that lets me travel - Working on a professor's schedule means that I have four whole months of the year to gallivant around the world and see the sights I've wanted to see since I was twelve. You can't beat that. Two years of hagwon purgatory have suddenly become worthwhile. 
• Swedish Fish - Without those little red fish-shaped candies, no visit Miss H and I made to the Skyline Drive-In movie theater in Barstow, California would ever have been the same. She brought a few bags home with her today. Time to catch up on all the TV shows that we missed!
• Brant and Joseph, my beer-brewing buddies - I would never have had the determination or the gumption required to start home brewing in Korea by myself. Thanks to them I have a store of goodly memories to tell about my time in South Korea...and a few dozen bottles of tasty brew in my fridge.
• my mad bomber hat - Made of real leather and rabbit fur and given to me as a Christmas gift by my parents a few years back. It really keeps my head warm in winter and cuts those icy winds down to size. It'll come in handy in Hokkaido. It may seem daft to be grateful for a hat, but no other chapeau suits my personality (or my head) as comfortably as that one. 
• absurdity - For reminding us that life is fundamentally crazy on so many levels, and that we need to slow down, realize it and laugh at it before we all go nuts. Also for being my modus operandi.
• radio - For connecting people, places, ideas, news, music, politics and free-mindedness across vast distances (and even between Earth and space) long before there was TV or Internet. There's a simple sort of elegance, warmth, beauty and intimacy to radio that television and the Web both lack. Radio (and vinyl records) fostered in me my love of music — long before I bought my first CD, I had a radio on my bedside table, dial twirled to the classic rock station. It brought me The Beatles, The Who, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Coldplay, Owl City, and too many others to name. There's something about gathering around the radio set and listening to A Prairie Home Companion that no episode of Family Feud or Golden Girls can equal. 
• H.G. Wells - He didn't trust his fellow man, accurately predicted the future (grim as it was) and taught imaginative youngsters like me that there was more to life than what we could see. Good on ya, Herbert.
• flying small airplanes: Not sure who to thank for this, but Orville and Wilbur Wright and Clyde Cessna all seem like likely candidates. I don't know who or what I'd be without flight. I'm so grateful to the aviation pioneers and airplane manufacturers who allowed me to taste that heady magic previously allotted only to birds and pterosaurs (and take Miss H out on some kick-ass dates).  

The second part of this challenge is showing your gratitude to others. 

3 PEOPLE I THANKED:

Mr. A: My animator/illustrator. He's been very patient with me, and has done some pro bono work for me in the past, creating concept illustrations of my works, which I never believe I've thanked him for. I gave him a very specific and heartfelt thank-you.

Mrs. G: A very classy wife, mother, and former classmate from the High Desert. She's actually taken the time to read (truly read, and think critically about) some of my works, and give me thoughtful and helpful feedback, not the usual "your grammar sucks" or "I liked this part" blather. She is my intended audience: the person I write to when I write science fiction. I thanked her sincerely for that, and for paying attention to what I do on FB (she never fails to "like" or comment on the silly stuff I put up there, inflating my ego enormously). She also sends me neat stuff from around the Web that she finds: hilarious memes, the latest gadgets from ThinkGeek, or the coolest updates from Popular Science.

Miss H: My fiancée, of course. I took her for granted there for about 18 months of our three-and-a-half-year relationship, and am trying to cure myself of that horrendous habit forthwith. She went home to the States last week and she brought back a truckload of useful stuff for me: delicious candy and snacks, extra pajamas and workout clothes, a new eyeglasses case, and a host of other assorted gewgaws. I took her in my arms, told her I loved her, what a wonderful wife she is (even if we haven't tied the knot yet) and that I really appreciate what she did. 

There you go! I've cultivated my gratitude. This day, more than any other, I think, has been a valuable lesson for me. I let things go. I take people for granted. No more. I think I'm a little more mindful of things now (isn't that what the Buddhists, gurus and psychologists are always on about — mindfulness?). Looks like this challenge is helping me out already, and we're not even a week into it.


Stand fast for Day 6.

Sagano bamboo forest

You know how there's a scene in every worthwhile martial arts film where the protagonist and an army of mooks (or just one persistent boss) have a duel to the death in a bamboo stand? The greenish trunks go up all around, and the floor is littered with their narrow leaves, dyed beige in death? Usually some of the bamboo trees will be heartlessly severed in twain by a wild stroke of an adamant sword, and the fight will move into the realm of fantasy and conclude in the upper canopy, with the contestants walking on air.

Well, if you've ever wanted to feel what that would actually be like, you gotta head to a bamboo forest. And fortunately, that's just what the quaint, archaic little community of Arashiyama (also known as Sagano) has tucked away in its western depths, near the River Hozu.

I could have gotten into a rickshaw at the foot of the Togetsukyo Bridge and had the driver take me to there, but (a) I didn't know what the word for "bamboo" was in Japanese, and (b) I felt far too sweaty to sit on those red velvet seats and muck 'em up. So I just hoofed it. It wasn't a long walk.

It wasn't a long walk through the forest, either: just a few hundred yards. But in that meager space is packed a lifetime of exotic and delightful imaginings: tigers leaping out of the underbrush, sweating swordsmen—perhaps even the venerable Miyamoto Musashi, who plays a central role in the next stage of my Japanese journey—yelling and swinging their swords between the trunks, white-clad kung fu masters leaping and kicking about in the canopy.

Uh-oh...should I be following this guy?

This is my favorite picture.

I strolled until I reached a T-junction and figured that was enough. It was hot and still in the bamboo stand and I was sick of being soaked. For the umpteenth time I cursed myself for not doing as the Japanese do and traveling everywhere with a hand towel at my collar to sop at my neck and forehead. I made my way out the same way I'd come, noting the proliferation of gravestones, a Buddhist temple and a host of other foreigners (no doubt here for the same reason I was).

Back out to the main street, and I was finished with my expedition to Arashiyama. I felt quite regretful as I bought myself a soft-serve soybean ice cream cone at a shop window and made my way east to the Keifuku tram station. Western Kyoto was the prettiest and most culturally rich thing that I'd done in Japan thus far, and I was loath to leave. Someday I'll go back and eat there, and drink tea, and buy a lot of crappy souvenirs that will sit on the shelves of my man-cave and collect dust, and then I'll feel like I've explored the place properly.

Some random temple off the main street. Sure wish I'd explored it.

Across town lay the next item on my to-to list: the Golden Pavilion of KINKAKU-JI. Before I tell you about it, though, I want to say a few words about THE KEIFUKU RANDEN TRAM. Trust me, it's worth your while. Tune in tomorrow...

sci-fi art, entry #3

I'm not going to say much about this one; just do whatever you brain wants to with it. I will say, however, that this piece inspired a very pivotal scene in Novel #3 (which has just cracked 45,000 words and ten chapters). Make of that what you will. You may wish to click on it to expand it to its full size.

One more thing. The reason I don't usually credit an author for these images is because I found all of them on free wallpaper sites, often without any author's or artist's name listed. And that's kind of nice, you know? Keeping things anonymous. Just letting the dreamers stay in the shadows and do their thing and weave dreams for the rest of us.

as promised...a bit of sci-fi art

I mentioned earlier that I was going to restart my weekly installments. Not the same ones as I had before; no more random travel destinations, and only the occasional cocktail review (I need to travel and drink more first).

I will, however, start hitting you with a thought-provoking piece of speculative art (digital or hand-crafted) on a semi-regular basis. (I might throw in some photographs of flying machines, too, just to keep this blog in the aviation zone.) So here's the first of many, let's hope:

I've often found myself wishing that I could live to see the golden age of human space exploration...and, with any luck, colonization. Maybe one of the terraformed moons of Saturn or something, just to see a sight like this. A whole planet dawning there on the horizon. Ain't it glorious? 

recommended reading

There's some serious catching-up in order.

Therefore, I won't tell you about what I'm reading right now. I'm taking a break and just doing some stuff for business and pleasure. I'm busting through a couple of sci-fi anthologies (The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes I and IIB), which I hope will help me write better sci-fi, and also are a damn lot of fun. I might even tell you about some of the stories I've read, if you behave yourselves.

In addition to that, I'm slowly plowing through Dr. Robert Bakker's paradigm shifter The Dinosaur Heresies, in which the scruffy, courageous maverick first put forth his controversial theory that dinosaurs were not pea-brained, slow-moving, swamp-dwelling sluggards, but were dynamic, lively, active, agile, bird-like and intelligent. This bombshell challenged hundreds of years of universally accepted scientific thought on the terrible lizards. Bakker's discoveries, though initially criticized, withstood all tests and vitriol. Today, when we think "dinosaurs," we imagine the terrifyingly smart and agile Velociraptors from the film Jurassic Park. We have Bakker to thank for that (even though the paleontological consultant to Spielberg's film was Jack Horner, Bakker's bitter enemy, who believed that T-Rex was a scavenger [?!?!?!?]).

I haven't enlightened you about what I've already read, though, and that's why we're here. I have to review a couple of works I completed after finishing Moby-Dick a few months back.

I didn't waste any time sitting on my laurels after conquering Melville's leviathan. I was over at Miss H's place when I spotted Elie Wiesel's seminal work Night on her bookshelf. I asked to borrow it, and before the day was out, I had finished and returned it. It's a little book, but filled with the scope of human tragedy, suffering, cruelty and horror.

I could speak of how Elie and hundreds of other Romanian Jews were removed from their villages by brutal Hungarian policemen, cudgeled into lines, and marched away from their only home...

The last glimpse Elie had of his mother and sister as they were led into the gates of Auschwitz...

The loss of Elie's faith as he witnessed the hanging of a twelve-year-old boy...

How even the rabbis were reduced to blank, staring, godless husks by the horrors of starvation, torture, and brutality...

The long, cold, desperate flight from one camp to another as Allied armies drew near, and how the Jewish prisoners were forced to run through the snow and the darkness, and any who straggled or fell were shot...

...but that would probably spoil the book for you, so I won't.

Wiesel is on the second row up from the floor, seventh from left.

I'll just say this: more than any other work I've ever reviewed—fiction or nonfiction, printed or televised—Night brought home the horrors of the Holocaust most grimly and truthfully. It's a literal punch to the gut. For once it's no surprise that a particular work won the Nobel Peace Prize.

And now on to more cheerful territory...
Have you ever wondered if maybe the scientists were wrong, and the interior of the world wasn't just a mass of molten rock, but was hollow and cool and airy and possibly filled with prehistoric beasts?

Well, even if you haven't, Edgar Rice Burroughs sure did. And he wrote At the Earth's Core just to show the world what he thought.

There are definite fringe benefits to being friends with a scientist. Make a sponge of your mind and you'll soak up a lot of mental detritus. As an added perk, your scientist chum may even let you give his gizmo the first test ride.

Such is the case with David Innes, the wealthy heir to a mining empire who, attempting to make a good show of his father's business enterprise, invests in the invention of his scientist friend, Abner Perry. The invention is the "iron mole" a sort of segmented steel worm with a huge drill on the front, which Perry insists will increase efficiency one million percent. As the principle investor, Innes is given the privilege of riding shotgun in the device while Abner takes it on the maiden voyage.

Everything goes downhill from there, so to speak.

The giant iron mole burrows into the ground like a...like a...well, like giant iron mole. Alarmed, Professor Perry tries to turn the beast aside and regain the surface; but no such luck. Both men strain at the helm until they're blue in the face, but the mole cannot be turned; it's heading straight down at a tremendous rate. Perry and Innes give themselves up for lost, resigning themselves to falling into the Earth's molten mantle and perishing in the blaze.

...but they don't.

Five hundred miles down the mole suddenly bursts out of the ground again. A fresh, cool breeze streams through the cracks. The Professor has collapsed from heat and exhaustion, but Innes is able to crack open the hatch and look outside.

He sees trees. Hills. A beach. An ocean. And a horizon which curves up instead of down. He can see mountains and oceans in the distance, turned on their ends, as though he was seeing from above.

Gradually, the men figure it out. They're standing on the inside of a huge sphere.

They are inside the Earth.

The Earth, it turns out, is hollow. And what's more, it's inhabited.

Welcome to Pellucidar, the savage land at the Earth's core.

All the better to massage you with, my sweet!

Perry and Innes are soon drawn into a millennia-long conflict between the primitive humans who reside in Pellucidar and the vicious Mahars, telepathic reptilian monsters who keep humans as draft animals...and livestock. Along the way they encounter sabertooth cats, dinosaurs, sea monsters, and all manner of nasties, dwelling in a land of eternal sunlight.

At the Earth's Core was first published serially in 1914, and released in book form in 1922. Since then, it has attained a small cult following, but remains largely obscure, probably due to more well-known stories like Verne's Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Nonetheless, it's an astounding tale. The concept is intriguing, if totally bogus. (Hey, that's why they call it science fiction, right?) First off, there's no way there'd be eternal sunlightg at the center of the planet, weird electrical phenomena notwithstanding. Second, gravity's pull would be considerably less at the center of the Earth, but it would still pull you toward the center. You could not "walk about" on the inside curve of a chamber inside the globe unless the planet was spinning a lot faster, like a centrifuge. Third, the air would be so dense 500 miles down that it'd be tantamount to breathing water. Human lungs would collapse.

But I didn't come here to pick the science apart. I came to tell you how awesome the story was. And it was awesome. Burroughs sure knows how to write a gripping fight scene (and there's a boatload of fight scenes). The plot rapidly becomes more complex and convoluted as human traitors, mindless monsters, and a ravishing love interest make their appearance. There are desperate scrapes, close shaves, narrow escapes, rousing victories, moments of unbridled joy and plenty of stark, quivering terror. And at the end, there is a very human feeling.

Everything that makes good, rousing science fiction, in my opinion.

You might have a little trouble getting into it, as Burroughs does have what critics called a "stilted, florid style"...but it's nowhere near as bad as Jules Verne. You'll do fine.

And finally, as an interesting sidenote...

In At the Earth's Core, the Mahars (those evil reptilian beings) employ the thuggish gorilla-esque Sagoths to do their dirty work for them, rounding up slaves and enforcing the rules. At the Earth's Core had an enormous influence on another of my favorite authors, H.P. Lovecraft. In Lovecraft's book At the Mountains of Madness, he introduced the shoggoths, huge, slimy, amorphous blobs, also the servants of a master race. These were inspired in name and function by the Sagoths of Burroughs's story. Shoggoths have proven as influential to other writers as the Sagoths were for Lovecraft: the beastly things have appeared in countless works of fiction, sci-fi and horror over the decades. One of these works, notably, was Robert Bloch's Notebook Found in a Deserted House, which is widely accepted to be one of the cardinal inspirations for the 1999 film The Blair Witch Project.

That concludes this edition of "Six Degrees of (Literary) Separation."

Is he bursting out of the hillside in a mindless rage? Or did he lose his toboggan?

Until next time...

welcome back, Beethoven

The last couple of days have been warm and muggy. The moisture in the air and the warmth of the sun have combined to produce some extreme cumulus and cumulonimbus clouds. Thunderstorms have been building up in the morning and unloading at night. It's miserable on the ground, but the view is fantastic: great white towers loom high above the desert like the hives of gigantic insects, or the airborne edifices of some futuristic civilization.

It may be hot and humid by day, but at night it (usually) cools down, and a sweet breeze blows through the house as lightning crackles over the dark mountains in the distance.

And here I sit, pajama-clad, a big glass of water by my side, fans on, listening to Beethoven's 5th Symphony, 4th movement. I actually prefer the fourth movement to the first. The first movement of Beethoven's 5th is the one everybody knows, allegro con brio—you know, duh-duh-duh-DUHHHHHH, duh-duh-duh-DUHHHHHH. It took me ages to find the fourth movement on YouTube because it's simply allegro, and search engines always assume you must be looking for the allegro con brio first movement.

The fourth movement isn't as dark or weighty as the first. It's quick, cheery, larger-than-life, full of pomp and bombast and triumph, reminiscent of Beethoven's 6th or Pastoral Symphony. I'd always been familiar with the first movement of Symphony No. 5, but I first heard the fourth movement when I was a kid, on a Beethoven tape (yes, an actual eight-track tape) that my folks had.

I was intoxicated. I saw visions, listening to it. I'd watched the original Star Wars trilogy not long before, and I saw, as I listened, Bespin and Cloud City and the sky-towers of far-flung planets. Clouds, light, air, and sun, the gleaming spires of fantastic cities...pure beauty put to music. Even at that young age I thought, "This couldn't have been written by the same man who wrote that gloomy Fifth Symphony" (this was before I knew the two works were from the same piece of music).

For years, the only place I could hear this beautiful composition was on that tape. I never forgot it. Even if it slipped my mind while I was away at school or overseas, I'd hear it again on occasion, thundering faintly at the edge of memory as I gazed over the wondrous sights of distant lands.

As the clouds built and climbed and towered and rolled over the Mojave yesterday evening, I remembered the fourth movement. I dug that old Beethoven tape out of the dresser drawer where it had lain for months, popped it into an aging tape player, and let it flow again. And man, wasn't it lovely. All those times I'd listened to it as a kid came flooding back. Just as I had all those years ago, I stared out of my window and let my mind fly. I watched the titanic cloud-castles, which hung in the skies above the desert exactly as they did above Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back. I soared over their sun-drenched expanse, orange and pink and purple and red and gold, leaping from powder puff to powder puff, kicking up a spray of vaporous foam, dodging the skyscrapers, the lighthouses, the lofty crags, the conning towers of ethereal battleships. The sky was a landscape in itself, a glorious chaos of color and shape and endless wonder, through which I hurtled to my heart's content, buoyed on waves of sound sprung from the mind of a long-dead genius.

To this day I cannot believe that Beethoven was deaf. Nobody could weave harmonies like that and not hear them played afterward. It would be the most monstrous injustice, like erasing the very clouds themselves from the evening sky.

Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane, Ludwig.

And the leap through the clouds, too.

ADDENDUM: Thanks to Rebel, I was informed of a rather neat blogfest taking place over at Dawn Embers, the Word Paint Blogfest, where the bloggers' job is to paint a scene with words. I guess that might be what I've done here. It's worth a shot, so I've entered. Thanks a million for the encouragement, Rebel. Eat your heart out, people.