Controlling the Vertical and the Horizontal

Whew. After days and days and days of unpacking, cleaning, and reshelving the books, the newly repainted North Bedroom is finally presentable. The shelving is not perfect, and I imagine that I will be making slight alterations in how the sections are working.

On one physical level, the only way to get (most) all of the books onto the main shelves was to switch from vertical shelving to horizontal stacking. I’m not sure how functional horizontal stacks will be for a semi-regularly referenced library. It works best when there are many books by a particular author or in a subject matter. It also means that the larger books, which may or may not be the books I’m more likely to consult, form the base of the stacks—consulting them will be like that magic trick where one pulls a tablecloth out from underneath a set of dishes. Hey Presto!

The fiction paperbacks have, alas, been double-shelved on some separate modular shelves. I am going to see if I can purchase some additional planks and brackets and increase the linear shelf space.

There’s no rest for the wicked, however. Now that the books (and the banker’s boxes they were stored in) have been put away, I have to move onto restoring the bedroom closets, which will involve finding brackets for the very long closet rod and installing them before I can transport the costume and prop department lurking in the North Bedroom and Main Hall closet into the new bedroom closet.

It also means figuring out where some other objects are going to live. There were a number of tchotchkes interspersed throughout the books and I’m resisting the urge to return them to the shelves. The chief of these is my Writers of the Future award from 2006, which inspires the joke about the person who goes to a costume party as a Gifted Child, and when asked “What are you supposed to be?”, replies, “Oh, I was supposed to be so many things.” Mark has already moved the trophy, which is a sharp prism of about seven pounds of acrylic, from one end of the modular fiction shelves to another end, where it will be less likely to kill me when The Big One hits and the trophy does a Sword of Damocles impression.

Unfortunately, I can’t make the closet in our new bedroom behave like a TARDIS, and there simply isn’t room for the Old Burridge Chest of Drawers and Portable Stonehenge and my clothes. And my Doctor Who Scarf. And the giant, wool, double-breasted Pegasus Ranger army greatcoat. And my necklaces, talismans, and amulets. And the crowns (plural). Or the file cabinet of critiqued manuscripts.

Or the banner with a full length Cicely Mary Barker Cornflower Fairy on it. I like it because it reminds me of my Anglophile Aunt Margot, and because I like cornflowers; and the over-the-top pose of the young male fairy with his hands to his cheeks and one leg bent up screams, “OMG! You want to go to the fancy dress ball with me?!” Whether it’s Too Much Old Lady or Too Much Twee I can’t say—but it’s so “Too Much” that it’s funny. I’m not sure why Mark hates it and calls it scary. Okay, we did hang it up behind the door of the bedroom just before The Child's temporary return between college academic terms in a decor move that Mark calls "weaponized;" so there may be a residual Grandma-Jumpscare element involved.

Mark also does not care for the large, sixty-year old, touristy temple rubbing of a bunch of bright blue Hindu women playing instruments. I’m sure my parents purchased it on their travels overseas when they were sophisticated almost-thirty-year-old Americans in 1962. It used to be a central image in the downtown house I lived in before I was seven—I thought the figures were pointy-eared extraterrestrial ?women? wearing space (or diving) helmets, with alien devices; avatars of celestial mystery casting a spell; or possibly space sea-monkeys having a party. What I took for either a lap-sized crystal ball or else some sort of space communication device in one woman’s lap in real life is actually a tambour, seen drum-head on. The air-tubes connecting their helmets to the geometric space suits that I saw as a kindergartener are actually chunky necklaces draped strategically over bare, spherical breasts. Perhaps it is Kama-Sutra-adjacent. I suppose I find it compelling and oddly comforting in a “the party’s still going” kind of way; Mark thinks it’s poorly executed.

Finally, there’s the small bronze unicorn bust on a pink marble plinth. I bought it when I first moved to Eugene to live with Mark. It’s fine art that doesn’t look like a bunch of scrap metal and gears glued together, nor does it look like a twee citizen of the Glass Menagerie. Nor is it Eugene Hemp Macrame with Driftwood and Beads. I’ve always thought it might be fun to make the piece a gnomon for a sundial board, but mostly it’s lived here and there in the house in the shelves or by the Portable Stonehenge or on the mantle or the dining room table. Apparently Mark doesn’t like it (and never has)… not because it’s nauseatingly cute, but, I think because a gay man owning a cast bronze unicorn bust is fence-sitting in the way a gay man owning a scaled-down replica of Michelangelo’s David or a reproduction of a sexy, Pre-Raphaelite Saint Sebastian isn’t. Also, being just the head and neck, the unicorn is slightly reminiscent of “The Godfather.” (“Nice bookshelves. Shame if something happened to them.”)

When I get a little overwhelmed, I go into the North Bedroom and look at the main, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves: vertical shelving tidily interspersed with horizontal stacks. Dusted. Clean. Accessible and not double-stacked. The hardback novels; the Arthuriana next to the Dion Fortune next to the Ronald Hutton; the gay history running into the gay spirituality; the divination section just beneath the poetry section; the astronomy section and the folklore section and the gardening and herbal section—and along the entire length of the main shelf is the art and the history and the art-history running from the Paleolithic to the Egyptian to the Greek, Roman, and Islamic; to the European Mediaeval and Renaissance; spanning to the Pre-Raphaelites, Escher, Mucha, and the Impressionists; ending with Barbie and Art Deco and New York Gargoyles.

I suppose the books spanning time and space are as close to the TARDIS as I’m going to get.

Bedroom Swapping

The last few weeks our house has looked like a packrat’s nest as we swapped bedrooms. When we moved into the house decades ago, we put The Child into the bedroom that overlooked the back yard and ourselves into the bedroom overlooking the sidewalk and street. The bedroom swap prompted a thorough cleaning of The Child’s room and a repainting of ours. During all of this painting and cleaning, the beds, the desks, the chairs, the dressers, the rugs, the paintings, the bulletin boards, and the tapestries had to be schlepped into the garage or the living room. Including The Books. About thirteen banker’s boxes filled to bursting with books have blocked off the fireplace mantel, and about thirteen more have crouched in front of the front window during this whole operation.

Whether it’s through childhood exposure to expansive family libraries, or a past life at the Library of Atlantis, I have a large number of books. It’s not a problem at all—I have managed to refrain from procuring a wheeled library shelf ladder for the purpose of reenacting Belle’s opening song from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It does, however, provide a friction point between Mark and myself, and sometimes I think it motivates Mark to outlive me for the sole purpose of disposing of all my books, books, books, books, books. Obviously, I will have to secure a fortune so that I can be interred in a mausoleum/library (pause to imagine writing workshops in “The Dead Writer’s Library”).

The Child’s old bedroom had been repainted when he left for college, so it was mostly a matter of dusting and scrubbing at the more curiously persistent blemishes to prepare it for the switch. Our bedroom still had the original paint job we did when we moved in.

Before we bought the house, the owners had painted the walls a color best described as sandstone meets khaki. I could never decide if it wanted to be dull yellow or olive drab—but what I could tell you was that it sucked all of the light out of the air; we toured the house on a rainy June day and it was like stepping into a dark, dismal, dingy cave.

I told Mark that we’d have to repaint because if the darkness was this bad on a rainy June day, I’d want to slit my wrists from February seasonal depression if we didn’t. We ended up choosing colors from a French Art Nouveau book of patterns that went with the oak floor: sunflower yellow for the walls, red-orange for the window trim, and a pine green for the door trim. Mark liked it for about a month, and then said that our house looked like, “The Honeybun Café.” I will admit that there were times when our home’s interior put me in mind of a high-end McDonald’s. Over the years, the living room, the kitchen, and the bathroom got repainted in much less saturated versions of yellow and green.

In our old bedroom—which we’re beginning to refer to as “The North Bedroom”—we replaced the pine green trim on the windows, doors, and bookshelves from twenty years ago with “aurora brown,” a chocolatey color, and the wall color with what looked like white when it first went on but turned out a light lemon color. (Afterward, when I compared the new yellow with an old patch, the old yellow looked dirty.) For some reason, the colors make the room look like an Edwardian room that Eliza Doolittle would practice her diction in. We’re thinking the Edwardian style will dictate some sort of motto in the corner above the windows: “memento mori” seems a little dark, but E.W. suggested “sic itur ad astra.” Now, of course, I want a sarcastic version of something like “live, laugh, love,” or maybe a PDQ Bach quote like, “Donna nobis pacem cum what mei”. Or maybe something about finding the grail in the Castle of Aaargh.

I really do want to get the books back onto the shelves. I used to have a string of white LEDs snaking along the front of the shelves, and I think I might re-affix them along the back of the shelves so that they provide a more indirect backlighting while avoiding a cantina aesthetic (they are currently strung over the living room window, which makes it look like we’re living in a department store diorama). After that, the trick for The North Bedroom will be to get a floor lamp, a writing desk that’s large enough to accommodate a workstation on it, and some more book shelves into the room without crowding it. I had a vague notion of moving a Stickley Chair from the over-furnished living room into The North Bedroom for a formal reading room feel, but it’s looking like both it and The Child’s bed won't fit. (I’ve always loved the Stickley Chair ever since I first encountered it in my Grandpa Burridge’s home; however, it really wants to be on a short dais, like the throne of Brian Rose’s father in the painting by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, which can be awkward.)

Our new bedroom (The South Bedroom?) has our bed and some minimal furniture in it: a small, medieval style chest for laundry, a narrow secretary desk for Mark to work from, and a glass mosaic night lamp. Mark is aiming for an Arts and Crafts/William Morris look for the room, so if we still have some money left after all of the painting, we’ll purchase a long, Morris-inspired tapestry to go along with a smaller one already hanging in the room. Mark has forbade me from placing glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling (although he is open to a projection of stars for the living room ceiling), and a (ironic) Cicely Mary Barker Cornflower Fairy tapestry has been excised from the room. The string of multi-color LEDs under the bed has, however, been approved and acts as a handy nightlight.

The final round in this game of House Tetris will be reorganizing the closets. We decided that we should each take one closet; Mark didn’t care which, and I’m thinking I’ll consolidate all of my clothes and costumes and props and files into the closet in our bedroom. Mark will combine his clothes and toiletries into the closet in The North Bedroom. This will free up a hallway linen closet.

I’m not entirely sure what will happen to the Old Burridge Chest of Drawers. It was sitting in a corner of our old bedroom. If I put it into a closet, it won’t exactly be the most efficient use of space. If I banish it to the garage, I’ll need to find a new place to put my personal altar and Portable Stonehenge. If I get rid of it entirely, it will make my ninety-year-old father sad (pause to wonder exactly why I still store a Scottish sporran and garb for a three-year-old me in the bottom drawer—I’m never going to fit into those clothes again).

Unfortunately, what is also falling out of all of this house reorganization is dedicated craft space and storage space for filing bills, correspondence, and old manuscripts. I suppose if we really wanted a room for crafting, writing, costuming, and archiving, we’d move or convert the garage into living space (considers old plans to extend the one-and-a-half-butt kitchen into the garage and give it a pantry).

I’m pretty sure Mark would chime in here, “or you could get rid of half of your books.”

The Morgan

 Mark and I went to New York City!

The bus system between Suffern and The City has changed; you used to be able to buy your tickets into the city on the bus, but when we got on, the bus driver wouldn’t sell us tickets (“Not at this stop.”) and pointed us around a corner to where a hidden convenience store sold them.   It wasn’t a huge deal, but it did mean we had to kill a half hour in downtown Suffern instead of exploring the coffeeshops of New York City.

We were going to visit various NYC sites, but ended up spending most of the day in the Morgan Library and Museum (https://www.themorgan.org).   I had never been.  I took a ton of pictures.  Of everything.

We saw a photography exhibition and then an exhibition of Maurice Sendak ’s opera set and costume designs.  I especially liked the owl costume and some of the dioramas for “The Magic Flute.”  We weren’t allowed to take photos, so I had to make do with some photos of the posters outside.  There were several operas in the exhibit, and we focused on “Where the Wild Things Are” and “The Nutcracker.”  

Then we went to have lunch with “Lime Green” Larry H.  This involved exiting the Morgan and walking out into a NYC downpour.  The downside was that we got a little wet.  It wasn’t so bad, as there were a lot of construction scaffoldings we took shelter under.  I unpacked my rain hat, which kept my head dry, but made me look like some kind of Pacific Northwest Fisherman (in a purple shirt).  I thought I looked dowdy, but Mark said I had character.  We did have a nice view of a fit young banker man who could have won a Wet Oxford Shirt Contest.   During lunch in a French-named place, we caught up with Larry and arranged to meet back up again for dinner later.

Then it was back to the Morgan.

By this time it had mostly stopped raining.  Mark wanted to see more of the exterior.  There’s some extensive restoration going on, so not much of it was visible underneath swathes of plastic wrap, but we did get to see the owl reliefs by the front door.

Then we re-entered the museum.  Back at the Sendak Exhibit, we continued with “The Clever Vixen,” and “For the Love of Three Oranges.”  What we got out of the exhibit was that Sendak was a hard worker who cranked out drawings as he worked through ideas; also he was able to draw in various styles — there were a couple of works from “Vixen” that looked like Edwardian children’s illustrations.  

After about an hour, we were Sendaked out, and continued on to the personal library and study of Pierpont Morgan.  

I was not expecting the enormous entry hall.  Or the dim and imense study.  I was so dazzled by the art pieces, the over-the-top interiors, and the mediaeval and renaissance artifacts that it took me a while to register that the Morgan is more a museum and an architectural folly than an actual public library (although it sounds like one could make an appointment to do research there and they have some of their holdings digitized).   Eventually, we made it into the main library.

  I was expecting a space something like the Krumpacker Library in Portland.  So I had a vision of walking into the library and being able to physically examine a book, but all of the shelves were behind glassed-in grilles.

Allegorical, mythical, and astrological figures bejeweled the ceiling; a bill-board sized tapestry of King Midas as the Sin of Avarice covered the wall over the wide and deep fireplace.  I tried to imagine owning a three-story room lined with wall-to-wall bookshelves and six-hundred year-old knick-knacks and decided that I’d be too overwhelmed to get any reading in.  

If it were my library, I’d want a table four feet wide and twenty-five feet long in the middle of it, with pop-up sectional bookshelves in the middle which could pop-up or sink flush with the table-top as needed.   And maybe a chase lounge desk.

I’d keep the bejeweled, Neo-renaissance art, though.

(Now, of course, I’m thinking of my library at home, which has something like a hundred linear feet of science fiction an fantasy paper-backs from the eighties, and more like twenty of art, literary, and science books.   And some art, but mostly tchotchkes.  And a desktop computer.  Hmmm.)

The Morgan’s main library had secret doors behind the stacks, but the doors were locked.  I did manage to peer between the cracks and can confirm there was a spiral staircase leading to the two levels of shelves above.

The last room we found was the librarian’s office, which held various ancient artifacts and a bevy of Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, and Franco-Kurgish artefacts.  For a moment, I thought maybe a prism with the law code of Hammurabi might be housed here, but I think that’s in Chicago.

The Assyrian seals were about the size of a finger, and the details on some of them were incredibly small.  I photographed the ones that I thought were cool looking, or of extra-fine craftwork.   What interests me the most about art from this place and period are the winged, pine-cone bearing figures.  In some places, I’ve seen them referred to as genies; but here they were referred to as “griffon-demons.”  

About three hours and two hundred photographs later, we had seen everything we could see and absorb.   Mark managed to keep me out of The Gift Shop.  We went out into the city; the humidity was more comfortable than it was before the downpour, but climbing.   We (okay, I) looked at various building details and photographed grotesques.

Mark led us to Grand Central Terminal, were I wanted to re-photograph the dragons (and horses) in the halls.  The hall they were in gave egress to a bunch of commuter trains, and standing there was like standing in front of a gigantic dryer vent.  However, I endeavored to get some more-in-focus and detailed photographs of the curling dragons adorning the walls.  I have a notion that it could be fun to make a cut-paper pop-up model of them, and earlier photos lacked finer details (the stone is light and they are illuminated poorly for seeing the minutia of the carving).

Then we wandered from the Times Square area to the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood.  We popped into a watch shop to visit family friend Deirdre from Ireland and played with some watches.   All of Deirdre’s co-workers were aware of the impending party, and one even said that he was going to be popping out of a giant cake (alas, this turned out not to be true).

More building photography, and also walking through a fairly gay neighborhood filled with guys in muscle-tanks.  And tight black shorts.  There were also some stereotypical off-duty Opera Queens, and some Light in the Loafers casual fashion plates.

One of the more interesting sights was coming across a radio-controlled crane lifting a pallet of building materials three stories.  The operator was on our side of the street while the empty crane stretched upward.  A co-worker on the top of the construction site used hand signals to indicate how close the load was to the delivery pad.

We walked in and out of the rainbow decorated streets before meeting up with Larry for dinner at a place near 9th Ave and West 51th Street called Empanada Mama.   News withheld during lunch was revealed during dinner.   It was good seeing Larry a second time for a less time-constrained visit.   One of these days, we’ll have to visit him on a day when he isn’t working and we can plan a time when we can chat at a slower pace, and possibly dancing.

And then it was time to head back to Suffern.  
 

Jackpot of Lost Items

I guess this is amusing more than anything.  I figured that I could use it as a prompt for a conspiracy theory story....



Me:  I put in a request for several items (see list below) that have hovered around for a long time, in three cases for over 18 months.  It seems like the items are stuck in limbo somewhere in the system.  What can I do to jump-start this process?

Thanks.

Library:  Hello John,

Let me answer each request by title.

The Penguin Handbook of Ancient Religions was ordered in May 2011 and the supplier canceled the order in August of 2011. The book is out of print and no longer available from the publisher.

The Official Blender 2.3 guide was published in 2005, is not available from our supplier, and we rarely keep software books that are over 5 years old. It may have been weeded from the collection and someone forgot to take it out of the catalog. (Blender for Dummies, 2009, is here if you want to look at a different book about it.)

The Ghost particle, a Nova movie from 2006 is no longer available.

The state of the art has been missing since early 2012. It is now a collector's item and new copies start at $97! We won’t be replacing it. (the University of Oregon Knight library has a copy at PR6052.A485 S83 1991. You can use your EPL card to check it out from them.)

You seem to have hit the jackpot of hold requests on items we no longer have. All of these items should have been removed from the catalog a long time ago. We are sorry you have been inconvenienced and are grateful that you let us know about these titles. Each of these will be deleted from the catalog and your holds will now show up as canceled.

Our apologies and thanks.

Buying a Small Piece of Heaven

I went to the Crumpacker Family Library Book Sale.

Entering the Crumpacker Family Library always makes me want to run around like Julie Andrews and sing, "The Hills Are Alive" - only my song would be about how the hills are alive with books books books BOOOOKS! - and then read a book while seated on a ceremonial throne.

Before the doors opened, I met a painter, and we started talking about her paintings and how I hoped I'd run into a really good book on Paleolithic art.

Then the doors opened and I told myself that I wanted to look for books on Paleolithic art and oh, look interior arts -- and no, you're writing Steampunk, so - hey! Art Nouveau! and Oh! 7000 years of Iranian Art!

No. Focus focus focus Burridge! You're writing about fantasy and steampunk and you need to look at source work for the ... ooooh! a book on silver tableware! That's Steampunk, or at least fantasy....

Finding a scholarly book on art that's at a nice price which makes my heart bubble over with bibliophilic avarice.

Everyone was very polite. I helped someone find a book on interior design and the painter's friend handed me a book on European Art History. We were all enablers.

When I think of heaven, it's filled with books. When I think of buying a little bit of heaven, I go a little crazy with divine badness. That was a Freudian slip of the fingers there, but it's probably more correct to say "divine badness" because I really only meant for this to be a dry run on what I would do at the book sale next year -then next thing I knew I had a really huge, heavy stack of older books.

Which I bought.

And they're all my favorite. And I want to read them all. And I can use them for research. And I'm not sure where they will fit on my home shelves. But I am pretty sure Mark is going to start laughing in a few minutes when I walk out of the building with two shopping bags full of second-hand art books.

[editor's note:  He did.]

Notes: Ursula K LeGuin

Talk at the Eugene Library.
(any misquotes, typos or mistakes are my own)

Le Guin:  [I want to focus on the question]  What happens when the the people in charge say hide or burn the books?

Reads excerpts from "The Telling."

All fictions writers dread the question, "Where do you get your ideas from?  The answer is, "Out of my crazy head.   But now and then you know where the crazy ideas get into your head.  I got the ideas for "The Telling" from China and Chairman Mao and the suppression of Dauoism.  The process was ruthless and methodical and went on for 40 yeas.  Around 1982, they opened up the temples as tourist attractions.  A religious practiced for 2000 years was erased in my lifetime.   But and I didn't know about it at the time.

Ignorance is what allows such things to happen and keep happening.  Ignorance is what despots and ideologues want.  Ignorance will allow or applaud violence against what it doesn't understand, which is by definition everything and anything.   I was ashamed by my ignorance, by writing a novel maybe I was trying to atone.  I don't know.  In the book I wanted to show a theocratic state and a secular state [both suppressing free thought],   To me theism and atheism are equally dangerous.

[...]

I also want to say the more we fudge on the separation of church and state, the more we check our powers to check bigotry and demogrogary.  To say that we are a Christian Nation is an ignorant statement if not an outright lie.   America is a secualr democacy in which Christianity is one of the largest religions out of many which the government supports equally.  We've been drifting away from that neutrality.  We should activelly trust toloerance to keep from losing our freedom.

(Self observation/question what is it about Library of Alexandria, Library of Trantor, Asimov's Nightfall, Feihrenheit 451, and The Telling  that compels certain readers -- is it a form of bibliophilia, a Reader's version of The Fall, or something else?)


MODERATOR:
You started writing at SF at  age 11.  What drew you to the genre?

Le Guin:  I just have a weird mind.  At 9, 10 and 11, my brother and I were reading Astounding SF and Amazing Stories.  So , I liked these short stories, and I thought, maybe I could write one of these.  So I submitted.  And I got a rejection slip that lasted me 20 yaers.

MODERATOR:  What challenges did you face publishing?

Le Guin:  When I got into my 20 I was seriously writing for 6 or 7 years without acceptances.  Finally, within the same week I sold to a SF and a literary magazine.  The SF magazine paid and the literary one didn't... so I had a certain bias for that.

MODERATOR:  [Lists various awards]  What do you think about literary awards?

Le Guin:  Its a big and complicated topic.  I think the trouble with literary awards. They are wonderful for young and first writers.  My first awards gave me a confidence that  I really did have readers out there.  The nebula and hugos are voted by writers and readers, not judges.  I think a problem with a lot of the Big Literary wards is that they are  selected by a panel of those judges.  In the US, the judges are predominately from the Eastern half of the US and they don't care so much about what happens in the West.  Too few awards are are Really BIg.  The Newbury Award is the only really big award for children's lit; but there are no other children's awards.  There aren't runner-up for Newbury .   We put ay too much weight on our book awards.

MODERATOR:  What experiences have you had with censorship?

Le Guin:  I havnt had many experiences that effected me directly.  What hit fantasy very hard started back in the 70s was fundamentalis Xtain decsion that Fantasy was Evil (witches).  So a lot of school baords got members etermined to get SF/F away from the kids.  Its censorship through the schools, which is dangerous.  And here I did run into it directily a couel of times.  I went to a hearing on my Books, because the studens to fhte High chlass stood up and defened The Lathe of Heaven (Iwant to decide that LoH is really stupid myself).

MODERATOR:  Films?

Le Guin:  The LoH in 1980 which is perfectly available still... I was in on the scripting and everything that I could b on.  I think we did a pretty good job.  Good acting... the script is so  so.. After that it was down hill all the way.    ... Its hard I didnt have to .. (makes face)

MODERATOR:  What do you think about listening to audio-books?

Le Guin: Hearing books read aloud is different agreement [than reading them].  I think audio-books are great if you can't read; [and I think we all love to be read too I like to be read to].

MODERATOR:  What are your observations about E-books, publishing, and print?

Le Guin:  Can we stay here for a week?   Ebooks are another way of doing books.  Now we have two big ways of doing books.  They each have their virtues and I hope we keep them BOTH (because they complement each other).  Yay for Libraries which have to keep up with the technology.  It s a difficult job for them to do.

MODERATOR:  You moved from Berkeley to Portland.  When did you move, what's the thing you like best about Oregon?

Le Guin:  The rain.  :-)  1959.  I have a list of things I like; Oregon is a great place to live.

[The moderator opens up the microphone to the audience]

AUD:  What would you say to a younger writer to encourage them?

Le Guin:  Its kind of rough to to encourage them.  The print publishers are thrashing.  The ebook world is in flux.  Therefore, a lot of bad things have happened.  A lot o the commercial publishers are demanding security.  Things are _harder_ now.  I can say, "just say hang in there, it will be wort it."

AUD:  How do you write; are you an actor in the story or a watcher of the story?

Le Guin:  I'm a listenier, especially if it the story has one person's point-of-view.  My novels come with a voice... :-) I hear voices in my head.

AUD:  I've been reading you for years... what are the books you go back to over and over and over again?

Le Guin:  I have read voraciously and constantly ever since I was five... many, many books.   ... Dickens, Woolf, Patrick O'Brian.  there are so many good writers.

AUD:  "Love does not just sit there like a stone, it has to be made like bread... " (quote from "The Lathe of Heaven")  How does that thought inform your thinking?

Le Guin:  The reason for that sentence in LOH:  "I'm not going to tell you how they make love"  If you want to read about lovemaking, there's a lot of that.  I think the actual act at the moment isn't interesting:  ITS DIFFERENT EVERY TIME.

AUD:  What ideas do you walk away from, OR what do you step away from?  How do you cut things?

Le Guin:  The filter is just there.  I never think of writing something I don't want to write.  My filter must be through temperament or experience built in. [Sorry, that probably doesn't help you too much.]

AUD:  What's your favorite thing you've written?

Le Guin:  The one I'm thinking about at the moment.

AUD:  Did you have a cat in the past who inspired Catwings.

Le Guin:  No, we've had and have cats.  But the idea came from doodling on a fridge list.  I drew a cat flying and looking smug.   And I looked at the drawing and asked, "What if you had a family of cats with wings?" [...] It was like the cat flew into my head.

AUD:  Some say there should be no copyright; some say copyright should be indefinite.  What's your stance?

Le Guin:  Most authors have a stance.  It think both positions are incredibly wrong and wrong-headed and unthought-out.  I am in favor of copyright because it is how authors make money.  If you don't own the rights to your work so you can sell it, how are you going to live?  [Without copyright] You have to find a patron; that is what they did up to the 18th C.  Copyright saved authors and gave us 150 years of the ability to make a living.  What went wrong was the Disney Law.  Copyright should be the author's lifetime + 25 years for their heirs.  DISNEY keeps extending copyright, which will destroy it.  Copyright encourages pirating.

AUD:  As a writer, is there a criteria that you hold yourself to when writing?  Do you apply those criterion to others' works of art?

Le Guin:  No... the criterion is too complicated.  To set up any list of criterion of excellence immediately becomes a straight-jacket.  You have to wing it.  You have to [be able to look at what you're working on and say "This needs more work" or  "Yeah, I think I got it."

AUD:  IS Science Fiction in a negative rut?  Is every future is a distopia?  Is the World is doomed?  Is this a sympom of the times?  Can SF writers do anyting about it?  Is it possible for SF to make a difference?

Le Guin:  Its a pendulum swing.   In the 30s we would have stories about a bright, democratic galaxy.  [...]  my trouble with [science fiction] right now is that it's unpleasant, it's highly intellectual and has no emotional vitality.  It's a sort of "Brainiac" mentality.  In order to speak to people on a deep level, it has to include more than just negative emotions.

AUD:  (Tesseract faux-pas).  How do you see SF/F as being an integral part of education?

Le Guin:  But I don't know ... if literature isn't a part of education....

AUD (a couple):  We live in a householf of writers and artists and you're our patron saint. (Presentation of Poems)    ... and thanks for helping me to become a whole human being.

Crumpacker Family Library

11:40 AM Sunday.  Portland. I'll let you in on a secret. I'm not the world's most assertive person. Even less so when I'm traveling on my own to a city larger than the one I live in. To get around this I rely on costume to either distract myself or fool myself into being more direct. Hence, the Pegasus Ranger outfit. Yes, I like dressing up; yes, Boys Don't Cry was singing "I Wanna Be a Cowboy" in my head; and yes, there were a couple of moments when I squared my shoulders, shifted my body language, and thought, "Don't mess with me, I'm a Pegasus Ranger." And then I smiled; Pegasus Ranger is right up there with Laser Unicorns in terms of seriousness.

I walked a short distance and then found a yellow-line MAX. The disadvantage to having a laptop and a camera in my bag was the weight. And, alas, I'm getting old. Mark would tell me that I should walk more to build up endurance, but I kind of didn't want the balls of my feet to be sore from walking sixteen blocks. And besides, the Museum was opening real soon now and MAX would be faster.

The MAX train pulled into the stop and I boarded. Just before the doors closed, a young woman with a cardboard sign hopped on. "Whoo," she said, "I almost didn't make it." A few minutes later she strolled through the train, saying in a much tireder-sounding voice, "Spare change?" Her sign said something about karma.

"Hey, Joe," she said to a young bearded man who smelled strongly of urine and amonia. "How you doing? I heard you and your old lady broke up." Joe related his woes: a story involving abandoned dogs, Xanax abuse, and wanting to avoid cops. Karma-girl and Joe got off at Pioneer Square; she was giving him advice about lawyers.

I got off two stops later and walked a few blocks to the Portland Art Museum. The great coat received adulation from the check-clerk. But it turned out that my coat spent more time in the Museum than I did, because the Crumpacker Family Library -- although sharing some space with the Museum in the Mark Building next door -- was a seperate entity with its own entrance. So, abandoning my coat to PAM, I toted my bag next door. Past a curt security guard, past a plaster reproduction of two naked Greek wrestlers, through a book security grid, and into... Paradise!

I'll say it again, in my best imitation of Brenda Vaccaro climbing the ladder to George Hamilton's bedroom in "Zorro, the Gay Blade." Paradise!

Imagine the art history room at Powell's books. Add burgundy carpeting to the bare concrete. Now make the bookshelves 1920's library shelves. Add a stage, high vaulted ceilings and carved, wooden beams; an Euro-ecclectic vibe with pillars and red drapes. Now imagine being told by the librarian that the room was once a Masonic Temple. Realize the four thrones arranged in a circle in the middle of this gigantic, vaulted, lofty, sumptuous, quiet, book-filled room are very likely the ceremonial thrones for the masters of the cardinal directions. Restrain yourself from squealing at the top of your lungs like a five-year-old at 4:30 AM Christmas day and running a victory lap around the stacks before collapsing in an ecstatic heap!! It was like being Scrooge McDuck in a bathtub of gold coins. It was like being a cat on catnip. It was like being St. Agnes pierced by arrows. I was in bibliophile heaven.


I'd seen a picture of the thrones on the library's web page, and they were everything I hoped they could be. Sitting in one was a comfortable pleasure, with excellent lumbar support; although I did wish I wasn't looking at a reproduction of a small boy picking a thorn out of his foot. I walked, or rather, skipped, in a daze and found a gigantic, full color illustrated, coffee-table book of paleolithic art. Translated from the French. (gasp) Critiquing the methodology of Abbé Henri Breui. (gasp) With sub-headings like, "The Ideal Paleolithic Sanctuary." (gasp) And that was before I found the old electric magic lantern. (gasp) In the little niche room. (gasp) Hidden behind a half-curtain.

I set out to immerse myself in Every Single Tome in this TEMPLE. A short time later, I was back at a throne, reading a catalog of "The Stuff of Dreams," a Portland Art Museum show Mark and I visited many years ago. I made some photocopies. I learned that squinch is a real term describing multiple layers of arches holding up a dome.

Several books on Burne-Jones, the Pre-Raphaelites, woodcuts, angels, and a book called "The Quest for Odysseus" later, I had a Mr. Spock in the City on the Edge of Forever moment. "I am a fool!" I thought. "They've got to have something on the Cult Wagon of Strettweg!" They didn't, or more precisely there wasn't monogram focusing solely on the Cult Wagon. The Librarian pointed me to a survey of world history, and pointed out how the shelves were arranged chronologically.

And this is where I nearly wept on my hands and knees as I searched: Because I found a book on Islamic Art, and another book on Roman art, and then another on Greek art, and shelves and shelves of Egyptian art. Being in the library was like being the proverbial moth consumed by the flame, the guest at the worldly feast or other metaphors from C.S. Lewis's  The Discarded Image: The problem was that I couldn't sit down and just read a book -- every book led to at least three others and I had to read all the other books. In less than four hours. Even if I had four days, or four years, or four decades -- well, maybe four decades -- there would be no way I could read all the books enshrined around me.

And I very much wanted to read them all.

I'd been wrong; I wasn't in Heaven, exactly. I was in a retelling of the Greek myth of Tantalus. I was Moses, stranded on Mount Pisgah, gazing at the Holy Land in the distance -- a Holy Land I would never reach.

After only three and a half hours, I was simply overwhelmed by all the books.  I didn't have a clear research plan (I hadn't been able to connect to the on-line catalog earlier in the week).  And being a Pegasus Ranger -- while probably charming the librarian -- wasn't going to help me. I packed up my photocopies and camera, thanked the librarian for all of her help, and strolled back to PAM, where I looked at actual works of art (silver chocolate pots, and tea sets mostly).