Prayer Request

Dear readers, I ask your prayers for my brother-in-law's father who unexpectedly passed away last night. Please pray for the wife of the deceased and for their sons; for the grandchildren and my sister.

Thank you.

Mary and God

Small sketch of the Balrog and Gandalf on Bridge of Khazad-dûm

Probably one of the most difficult images for artists to render from Tolkien's middle-earth is the Balrog, perhaps being second in difficulty only to the Ents. Though of course it is also one of the most enjoyable. It's just that so many of the images don't attain the peculiar vividness. I do not include this little sketch by any means as an exception.

The figure itself needs to be more engulfed within another black shape, as if there were two entities.

Peter Jackson's is sufficiently scary. But I find his leans too much towards the cloven-hoofed, beast-demon type. It's precisely when Tolkien describes the Balrog as being "man-shape" that suddenly the frightening foreboding, not-yet-seen terror becomes really freaking scary. Why is that?

We can go to town envisaging a fang-toothed, ember-eyed, flame-dripping beast-amalgam; but what is it when the demon in question is envisioned as having something like a huge and heavy crown, a too solemn princely dignity, a royal state that is also in every respect utterly perverse and wielded for horror, and suddenly it becomes just a little too real?

In the end every one of us is going to have a ruler: the One Who rules in heaven or the one who rules in hell.

It takes months for winter to die

To be oo-de-lallying through the summer woods right now…



And the summer always seems to be as short as that song.

Someone told me once that the winter solstice (Dec. 21) was given such import by early people in the north because it was a psychological way of dealing with the darkness: after winter solstice the days do naught but get gradually longer - with every passing day. You know they are even when it doesn’t appear so. It's a good handle to have.

It's good especially for those who sicken of winter, like me, when it has only just arrived. The sun's trajectory rises higher and higher through the winter, which is the winter's death knell. We don't get much snow on the coast, but when we do I welcome it. The cold and cloudy skies and rain also find welcome, but the perpetuity of it gets to me quickly. I have to admit I am a summer man.

Some would say that every person is a summer person, but that's not so. Many find the heat gets to them just as quickly as the winter gets to me. They want a San Francisco climate. But I love the heat, and when it turns to a mighty heat-wave I'm not bothered. I'm not one of those tan-sporting beach-party summer guys, but give me my bike and sandals and backpack, free-wheeling it to the woods, or any other numerable such things, and I'm set.

If bees can bring honey from flowers...

Father Dwight has a bee-you-tee-full post on "Honey from the Rock", right here.

Watched "Up" the other night...

Up is without a doubt Pixar's most emotional film to date, and there was a noticeable improvement on the villain front. The Incredibles still remains my favourite though. I thought the beginning retrospect where Carl Fredricksen enters the rickety, sun-lit house as a child - the moment that defines the rest of his life - so very, very tender and saturated with a reality not yet seen before in a Pixar film. It just feels like someone's real, full-blooded memory, filled with sublimity and pain; with the unutterably beautiful gifts given by God.

Unfortunately the entire story is so lacking. The house going up with the balloons...yes, I can go along with that...the man and kid walking through the jungle with the house tethered to them...sure, I can follow...the strange dogs with voice-collars...er, uhm, okay, I can go along with that (cheek a little bitten)...the dogs flying the airplanes...that's it, nope, forget it; I am not willing to accept that. My elastic whimsy cord has been snapped at that point.

There is a truthful, "we-gotcha" moment, when the kid Russell responds to Carl's indignation towards Russell's calling his mother by her first name. You don't see that, well, pretty much ever in a popular film today. There's Carl's decision to embark on a new adventure. Good stuff. But the story itself feels threadbare.

The Incredibles remains on top. And I don't have a second favourite from Pixar. Too many mixed bags.

Hopkins and The Northern Lights

"Sept. 24. First saw the Northern Lights. My eye was caught by beams of light and dark very like the crown of horny rays the sun makes behind a cloud. At first I thought of silvery cloud until I saw that these were more luminous and did not dim the clearness of the stars in the Bear. They rose slightly radiating thrown out from the earthline. Then I saw soft pulses of light one after another rise and pass upwards arched in shape but waveringly and with the arch broken. They seemed to float, not following the warp of the sphere as falling stars look to do but free though concentrical with it. This busy working of nature wholly independent of the earth and seeming to go on in a strain of time not reckoned by our reckoning of days and years but simpler and as if correcting the preoccupation of the world by being preoccupied with and appealing to and dated to the day of judgment was like a new witness to God and filled me with delightful fear." --Gerard Manley Hopkins, from his note-books (italics mine)

The first and so far only time that I saw the Northern Lights was driving through Ontario, making my way back to B.C. In the black mountainous thick of the wilds, the road curved either way before me, devoid of familiarity, devoid twice over: once for me not having ever driven through Ontario before, and twice for it being pitch night. Signs warning for the encroachment of moose or elk regularly went past, and my vertical axis of being grounded was also thrown out, since the road constantly went up and down.

Then there were the semi-trucks that would appear from behind and bear down. I could decipher vaguely the stronger darks of mountains against the dark sky, and at one point I seemed to come around a curve and I was staring at something ahead of me; apparently it was the sky, which again, could be seen by the negative contrast of mountains. Slowly it dawned on me that I was looking at Northern Lights.

It's not a sight you are suddenly startled by, like say a white mountain or a particularly intense sunset. It is something that hugely takes you in before you fully see it. And then when you do see what you are looking at, that is, when you are consciously telling yourself that you are now looking at that wonderful phenomena that the human race has named the Northern Lights, they do not cease to be wholly different and strange as on your first gaze, but everything around you then becomes like an abyss of hugely present peace - a scarily living peace, a strange wonderful wide world. You are looking into another time zone from the one you are in.

But Hopkins gets to what they are like - indeed, what they really are - much more clearly.

Drawing - Forest

My newest idols

I was at the coffee store and said it's now or never, and so splurged a bit. They have the dual virtues of making me cut back on the amount of coffee I drink, because of the time one has to put into manually grinding the beans, boiling the water, steeping and pressing, the somewhat intricate process of washing the press out; and then of making me savour the coffee I have in the cup, because it's ten times better than from the drip machine.

And shouldn't coffee be like that?

Pigments

The idea of grinding my own pigments from native minerals has taken hold, though just a cursive glance at this field is somewhat dazzling and dizzying in spite of all the simplicity about it. A small part of the desire has to do with the ideal of local sustainability (how less dependent can I get on industrial manufacturing and shipping/importing, and can it be brought to the point of no dependence?). But the greater part of the desire has to do with being intimate with one's materials in a way that it causes you to appreciate more the characteristic of a particular pigment, making you more sensitive to its potential, and especially hunkering down with good old limits: a discipline where the science of your materials and their application is respected with regards to permanency and at the same time is fused with your vision, making your vision more real because it is humbled.

The notion has been growing since I read a small Canadian Geographic article about one artist-and-iconographer in Ontario. During my great root canal epic (a root canal in five sittings, since it was the one tooth that had a root canal ten years previous, making for what the dentist called the longest known dental operation, since they have to go in and take everything out that was put in to be permanent all those years before and then putting new stuff in…one of the sittings being four hours…fun, fun, fun!) I came upon the article while waiting in the operating chair, and something about it seemed providential. I determined right there to remember the name of the artist in the article who went about looking for ways to make his entire palette from minerals and deposits from his native Ontario, so that I could search his name on the internet and hopefully come upon a site.

Naturally, I completely forgot the name, and halfway forgot the article. Nonetheless, I came across his site without even looking for it, and seeing his name on the site I said: Oh yeah! That's the guy I read about! Of course I was searching on making one's own pigments.

The article in The Canadian Geographic didn't really do justice to the pursuits of this artist/iconographer; it made him look like a dabbling hobbyist. This guy is really into it, and yet, he's been going into it without knowing a whole lot about it. He seems to use as many resources (both literary and physical) that he can, going to old mines and queries, lakes and rivers; using kilns and furnaces; growing his own woad plants to make Maya blue.

You can go to his site/blog here. Be sure to search through older entries.

Visitors to the house come with their dog

Garden Sprawl Friday

About three weeks ago the boss and I went to a forested area, owned by someone he knows, to collect ferns. Sitting across from a gas station the forest has some parts cleared, for it will probably be developed.

We came across a decaying Douglas Fir stump with - my heart always leaps to behold - red huckleberry bushes growing out of it. The boss knows my obsession for this vaccinium, and so we set to deft swings with the pick-axe and digging out the red humus onto the tarp, carefully taking out the bushes with their roots and trimming off some of their tops.

He said this stump was probably 100 years old; not the tree-growth age itself but that together with the time it takes to rot. It takes a long time for Douglas Fir to reach this beautiful state:

Even then, the outer parts of the stump were still solid and rooted immovably in the ground.

Now I must find solid or half-decayed logs of fir as well as some severed stumps, either with rotted material at the core or hollowed out (as they can simply be filled with humus).

The logs go on the bottom that has been sufficiently dug down, so that the logs are about half to three quarters submerged below the ground. On top of the logs go the stumps. Into the stumps goes the humus (if not already present). On top of that goes a good layer of more humus, with pine needles, sand, and other forest duff. Into that top layer go the red huckleberry bushes.

Car Recovered

A good way to spend part of one's new year's eve is to get the call that your car which was stolen almost three weeks ago has been recovered, and then go to the tow yard to pick it up.

I won't think too much about the $106.91 towing and storing bill, nor that the spare tires were stolen from the trunk, nor that the key ignition will do the beeping sound when you open the door, even when you remove the key.

No one urinated inside the car: positive. (Though I will still be cleaning the interior because otherwise it would feel too much like I simply lent the car out to strangers.)

There are no dents, no scorch marks, no scratches, no ripped interior: positive.

There are no broken locks or trunk hatch: positive.

The "Jesus, I Trust in You" decal on the back was not vandalized, nor the Holy Face pamphlets inside: positive.

I believe the RCMP officer on the phone even told me they found the car with the doors locked: bizarre.

From Seinfeld to The Office

I really like Kevin O'Brien.

Still Life with Apples and Tea

The tea still has to be poured, and a few other things need doing, like the designs on cup and saucer and some more detail on the apples and wood table top, yadda yadda. Oil on linen canvas. 20 inches by 16 inches. Price: one million dollars. Cheques, credit card, gold, whatever will do. I will accept the equivalence in old jewelry as well. Or if you can only acquire around, say, $10, 000 worth, say, from your mother's or grandmother's jewelry drawer, that's fine. Just stuff it into a manila envelope(s) and send it to my address. You may or may not receive the painting of course; it will be according as my whims and moods determine. If you do receive the painting, the painting you receive may or may not be the same one as pictured. Though it may be of apples and tea. Then again, the painting may be of a Tyrannosaurus Rex hysterically demanding ridiculous tax sums of a Brontosaurus for taking a dump while volcanoes in the background spew a century's worth of auto CO2 into the atmosphere. You never know.

Krull

The ways in which a lame B-movie like Krull turns to relative dust the best efforts of some of today's most serious and "visionary" filmmakers (fantasy or otherwise), who come a dime a dozen, packed with dexterous imagery, fully aware of every cliché in their path and who steer accordingly, is something worth pondering.

In 1983, in the midst of the Star Wars inundation, when successive films were being turned out ("Let's start production and write the plot later!") that would typify the 80's as belonging enormously to fantasy/sci-fi, a very derivative (as though Star Wars itself were not derivative), unremarkable, badly acted but earnest film called Krull was released.

Columbia Pictures put approximately $50 million into it, and lost approximately 35 of that cost at the box office. Most of the movie was made in England, directed by Peter Yates with a mostly British cast. In the summer of 83, and ever thereafter, it hardly made a sound.

Talk to some people who grew up in the 80's and you might catch one or two who has memories of this film. I was a fan of it as a kid, and even remember having some of the memorabilia. For a number of years I had no idea what the name of that film was of which I could only remember certain moods, and one scene in which a man reaches his bare hand into lava to retrieve a powerful weapon, his hand remaining unscathed.

Only recently have I discovered what that film was. Some dear person has posted the movie in full on youtube, and I watched it the other night. Many memories came back to me.

There was the obligatory wincing over how corny was something you did not find corny as a kid. But what came as something of a quiet shock, after starting to actually enjoy the cheesiness, was how much of this film is actually not all that bad, and in fact, kind of stumblingly well done. I was quite surprised.

Krull is the name of the planet on which the story takes place. The planet is invaded by the Beast via his galactic spaceship which is also the Beast's fortress (once it lands), called The Black Fortress. He has his minions called Slayers. There are two rival kingdoms on Krull. Prince Colwyn, from one of the kingdoms, and Princess Lyssa, from the other kingdom, are to be married, which will bring the two kingdoms together; it is foretold that their child will rule the galaxy. Hence the reason for the Beast to attack the wedding and steal the Princess (after the nuptials have been made), so he can rule, somehow believing that he will marry the Princess. After the wedding is attacked and the ruling kings killed, Prince Colwyn, awaking from unconsciousness, must set out to rescue the Princess.

By well done, do not take it to mean in terms of any outstanding artistry or of a full-orbed mythology. Make no mistake: the film is unabashed B-grade, cheese-ball-o-rama, full of loose ends, plot holes, contrivances and the whole bit. But it happens to be there wherein the charm lies; not as self-conscious camp, but a kind of four-square forthrightness and onward plodding. (Some would simply describe the quality as being that of a markedly English [U.K.] production.) And if its sources of derivation are good, then they will eventually speak, through most bumbling obstacles, even in glimmers anew.

The good to be found is not so much in the individual parts - though it's sometimes there too - as it is in the linkage; the way a certain nobility starts to come through, to lend the props and prosthetics, the ham acting and special effects a sweeping pardon: the need in us for a king and chivalry are pronounced unhurriedly, and the characters develop an unselfconscious way of free-play. The film, for all its nonsensical eclecticism, is straight-laced (in a light manner) and has what is today the unique strength of remaining an actual story through to end; the filmmaker does not attempt to bridge the natural gap between storybook and storybook reader. Krull would rather look stupid and silly than try false assimilation.

That is the challenge of fantasy: how well and complete and vivid can you render your sub-created world without at any point trying to gainsay the mere fact that the viewer is just watching a movie - or reading a book (I'm not saying film and literature are the same or even similar). The object is to tell the story and everything in the film must be brought to bear within the hierarchal fact of the story. When a character moves he cannot just move; he must move in middle-earth. This must be the way of good fantasy as a kind of Rule #1 - unlike, for instance, what is seen in the bloated soap nonsense of Lynch's Dune.

And that is one thing that Krull has going for it, in the midst of everything else that would detract. In addition to this, Krull puts me in mind of T.S. Eliot's response to a friend who asked what he thought of Chesterton's poetry: "He reminds me of a hansom cab driver who beats himself to stay warm."

As cutting as Eliot's statement may have been, the truth in it is apparent. Chesterton was God's Tumbler, and thought of himself as such. He was obviously, as with every person, a whole lot more than anyone's summation of him, but for the matter of Krull we can take along this tumbling, rollicking vigor that looks out for the actions of the figures and not their presentment; looks for the cumulative (and gently kinetic) word of the parts and not the parts themselves.

Or take this more exaggerated comment made by one fan at badmovies.org:

Reply #14. Posted on November 25, 2006, 04:10:12 PM by Derek

This movie is killer. It's really really bad and so excellently cool that i love it! :) The guy who plays the "old one" is probably one of the worst actors i've ever seen! He sucked in dune and he sucks in this movie too. The princess is about the wimpiest woman alive, the prince is blind in his goal and pig headed as hell, the "army" are about as incompetant as can be, and the slayers fight with the collective intelligence of a junior programmer. Nothing, but NOTHING makes sense in this movie! I absolutely love it!

Krull is lame by most means, but it is dogged. Take this doggedness and bring it to partake even just a little of Tolkien's "stewing pot", and you start to get something. In fact, I wonder if the stewing pot for Krull were given a little more time to cook (okay, a lot more time) it would be something of a great film today. The Star Wars elements are there superficially (and to me frankly could have been done away with), that is, nothing's there to do with the Force and its Gnostic baggage, but there's the laser beams and planetary context (the film even opens with a big "spaceship" coming into the picture plane from behind); while the earthier Excalibur/Arthurian legend and Robin Hood elements are the film's defining characteristics and general morality.

And the film does have the sparks and beginning fire-crackles of, the musterings of, mythology. Take for instance the Cyclops. The old man of the mountain, Ynyr, (Freddie Jones hamming it up juicily) explains some of the Cyclops race's story after Ergo nearly gets killed by a Slayer:

"A Cyclops."

"He was aiming a spear straight at me."

"Had that been so you would now be dead. He was aiming at a Slayer, for they have ancient hatred between them. Long ago his ancestors lived in a world far from Krull, and had two eyes like other men. Then they made a bargain with the Beast who was the leader of the Slayers. They gave up one of their eyes in exchange for the power to see into the future; but they were cheated. And the only future they are permitted to see is the time of their own death. They're sad, solitary creatures; born to know the day they will die."

I don't know how much or where it takes from (a bit of the palantir comes to mind), if at all, but dang, that has some meat to it! The problem is parts like this sort of just sit there in the movie; they lack cohesion of more fully developed myth.

There's also the Widow of the Web. But one of the scenes especially drew my memory to an image or idea I seemed inherently attracted to as a kid, which is the king with the key.

As Prince Colwyn travels with his two first companions, they are waylaid by a gang of merry outlaws. But Prince Colwyn, who looks an unlikely king, enlists the gang of robbers into his service. Taking a key from his glaive-medallion as a sign of his kingship - a key in the shape of a cross - he unlocks one of the robber's shackles, and offers to unlock all the shackles on their wrists if they promise to help him in his hopeless quest (sound familiar?).

What film today would even dare to approach such unabashed symbolism as a king carrying a master key in the shape of a cross that can unlock all the robbers'/outcasts'/sinners' manacles (or any lock on the planet) after calling them on his quest? Even Peter Jackson's last installment floundered in failing to adequately portray Aragorn's fearless and authoritative rousing of the cursed dead (yes, Krull's is better). What is it about such an archetype that even in its most meager, tossed-on-the-table, unadorned state it remains resonant, rich, ponderable - that is, something with a deep well of Real-History-within-our-small-history behind it?

Watching this scene on youtube, something like 26 years after the last viewing, my mind strove back to try and reclaim something just on the border of memory; again, something I was struck and enamored with as a kid and which still greatly tantalizes (and in the same degree eludes me) to this day: it is Christ as Trailblazer and Christ as Warrior-King, who also happens to possess the master key and, what is more, actually uses it; unlooked-for but suddenly appearing.

Can there be such a thing as a master key? Isn't that the stuff of…fairy tales? A king who we "waylay" who calls us to his quest is one thing in itself, but one who also carries a master key? "But," the child wonders to himself, "what if there really was? After all, it seems there would be if it's something so seared in my imagination."

With the incarnation of Christ there is. He goes before us, and has gone before us. His mercy is bestowed in a reckless yet seeing manner in rousing the outcasts to Himself, not as a tyrant, but as one who has become one of us, and as one who, being more than us, has an enormous task Himself to accomplish (the essential core of which He has already accomplished) and wants us with Him in that task. His sights are on us but also beyond us towards His end, His goal (which is completed) that subsumes us. How penetrating, how "lawless" is His calling and releasing of the outlaws! He is both king and rebel (rebel to the powers of tyrannical darkness).

What is this wonderful characteristic of Christ that He doesn't want us to be somehow chained to always recognizing his unchaining of us (No, I'm not a fan of the song Amazing Grace), as though that were the sole end of everything, but lifts our sights up to the distance He Himself is looking towards, the very helix-center of His quest? (Pope Benedict put it somewhere that Christ does not want us to be the "mere objects of His mercy". It goes without saying, we must recognize His mercy, but His mercy is not quantifiable; it's endless.) Therein lies our freedom; our freedom takes place within a larger task. We join Christ on His quest: thank God, it's not all about us. And yet within this larger picture we gain our true form, our true name; somehow miraculously our own small part is a very big part.

With an Apostolic echo, at the end of the movie, Prince Colwyn gives the master key over to the leader of the outcasts. Some criticisms of the movie are aimed at Ken Marshall's acting as Prince Colwyn (too shallow), but I like the bright lightness in how he both rouses the outlaws and gives the master key to Torquil (Alun Armstrong).

There's also the score by James Horner (who most recently scored Avatar). You can probably hear like-sounding elements from Krull's score in a number of scores throughout the 80's (many by Horner himself). The difference between them though is that Krull's score came first, and is easily one of Horner's best. Here's a good chunk of the score in the following scene. Prince Colwyn and his gang of merry outlaws are riding the Fire Mares over one thousand leagues to the Black Fortress; having disclosed its location from the Widow of the Web, they are trying to reach the fortress before it teleports to another location at sunrise in order to rescue the captive princess (yes, I liked writing that sentence):



"There it is."

"Yeah, and only a madman would want to get this close to it."

"We're going to get a lot closer. And quickly; it's almost dawn; we must get inside before the twin suns rise! Haw!"

Come on, you know you love it.

As for the way the film ends - not the very ending, but the defeat of the Beast - it is lame to say the least. In fact, just when you think the movie has expended itself in the matter of cheese, it takes a turn and seems to re-double the quantity in an amazing feat. But even in this lameness there is a noble recognition of the sacramental union of marriage and its power, whence the Prince derives his power to defeat the Beast.

And who really gives a shit about Avatar and its "new era" omni technology.

If you wish, you can watch the entire movie right here. Have a good time.

The Cloud Mystery - or That Inconvenient Universe