behind the mall

behind the mall
Originally uploaded by DharmaCrow

This is one of the photos I was working on the other night. I call them quadratic abstracts, in that it's the same image repeated four times. This one was a tree next to the road by 'the mall'. I photographed it when I went out to buy some milk at Target one night. Hard to get the full effect in this small version. I'm always struck by the forms and faces that seem to manifest in these abstracts.

I can't believe I read the whole thing..

Book Review: " John Dies At The End" by David Wong

Hmmm.... Looking back, I'm not sure what spurred me to pick up this book. The green-painted fingernails of the hand on the cover? The faux amateur artwork/graffiti adorning the cover? Certainly not the back cover, which is sort of a gruesome continuation of the front. The whole package seemed a little fey and kitschy; but what the heck, if it wasn't my cup of tea, I'd just take it back to the library.

David Wong is the 'pen name' (do we say 'keyboard name' now?) of the author, who's credentials include a stint as editor at Cracked.com. As a young teen boy, I always thought "Cracked" was a second-rate version of "Mad" magazine, so there wasn't a huge amount of expectation on my part that this book was going to win any literary awards.

One thing I can say for sure is that describing the arc of the narrative or the plot components in any manner that would remain coherent is almost impossible. This is not to say that the book is bad. Rather, the twists and loop-the-loops of the story are so far out there that if you tried to tell someone, they'd probably start urging you to get your head examined, or at least tell you to call when you're back in contact with reality.

If you can imagine a mix of Stephen King, James P. Blaylock, and Caitlin Keirnan on 'shrooms, you might be getting close to the action of this novel. It contains elements of satire, bloody gruesomeness, slapstick comedy, and philosophical musings.

The two main characters, the "John" of the title, and "David" of the authorial reference, are two pals that bear a twisted resemblance to the duo in "Wayne's World", but with more smarts and some old fashioned courage. There's a struggle between good and evil, hope and despair, the ridiculous and the sublime, and heaping belly laughs at 'modern culture', all taking place in "Undisclosed". As far as I've been able to ascertain, "Undisclosed" is supposed to be in the Midwest somewhere a bit south of Chicago... mm--maybe.

There's really no way to describe the various fast left turns, and violent jump-cuts that fling the reader back and forth, and into various strange worlds and realities populated by a cast of bizarre and creepy beings. And that's just in "Undisclosed"!! There's a whole other universe that the main narrator pops in and out of throughout the book as well. This will never be a mainstream success in the publishing world, but for a certain type of reader with some familiarity with the authors I mentioned earlier, this one is a must read and will keep you entertained thru a cold winter's night or two. Don't blame me if you have some weird dreams while you're perusing it, or if ordinary reality suddenly doesn't seem quite so 'real' anymore.

Based on the 'afterword', it sounds like there will be more stories featuring David and John. I think that because, well, unless I missed it, "John" didn't die at the end of this one. Enjoy this one, but don't fool yourself into thinking you'll be able to describe it to your friends.

Djinns and Demons Do Double Duty

Book Review---- "Requiem" and "How to Make Friends With a Demon" by Graham Joyce

I recently finished reading two books by the English author, Graham Joyce. My initial read was the novel, "How to Make Friends With a Demon", which I'd picked up at the library based on an interesting cover. ( Don't laugh!! Of course, you've never done that yourself...) Since was loosely categorized as 'fantasy/sci-fi', I figured it would be sort of a Gothic-type tale that would take a certain suspension of Crabby Crow logic to enjoy. You know... dark urban scenes, a little 'black magic', scary and malevolent non-human participants, a certain postmodern angst and despair passed around for all to savor.

As it turned out, this was not really the case. By the time I was far enough into the story to discern my mistaken assumption, I was taken by the strength of Mr. Joyce's writing and his clever propulsion of plot details.

"Demon" takes place primarily in London and it's environs, and is the tale of a man who embarks upon a sort of redemption for what he perceives as his life's errors and stupid mistakes, undertaking this even if it takes a little deception and fraud to put things right. He's an alcohol addled member of a secretive trio of disparate characters that called themselves "The Candlelight Club". Their main charter(besides getting soused every fortnight) seems to be the manufacture and sale of fraudulent copies of sought-after rare manuscripts to greedy and unwitting collectors. Then the ill gotten gains are funneled into an 'under the official radar' halfway house for the down and out run by a woman friend of the main character.

The 'demon' part of the book has to do with the character's ability to see people's 'demons'; which he insists plague the living and account for much of the mess these folks seem unable to shake. Yes, the author does bring in a shade of the supernatural, but it's not really a story about that whole gestalt. As the tale unfolds we're drawn into the interconnections between the various members of the "Candlelight Club" and their own personal demons, and the general struggle to do good and find some redemption and relief from our own personal hauntings. There are many eccentric and interesting people that we meet along the way, including a truly haunted vet of the Iraq war that takes on a doppelganger's role as the plot become enriched with dread.

As with all good tales, by the end, there is at least some sort of resolution for the main crowd of survivors. My usual cynicism was nudged out of the way at least for a little while after I had finished the book and sussed out the moral of the story.

This was my first exposure to Graham Joyce, ( I'm always delighted to find a good author I've never heard of before!!) and based on that, I went back to the library to see if I could track down some of his other writing. "Demon" was his most recent, so I pulled a couple of older ones from the stacks and bought them home in hopes of more winter's night distraction.

The next one that I chose to read was the aforementioned "Requiem". Again, a bit seduced by the cover, which was a portion of a luminous "Madonna" painting from the Renaissance period. This one was published in 1995, so probably written in the early part of that particular decade.

Well, this one was also filled with 'demons', but for the most part they were referred to as 'djinns', partly due to the fact that the majority of the book is placed in the Middle East, specifically Jerusalem. Similar plot line, a man trying to escape his past, and make some sort of amends or at least garner some forgiveness for his behavior. Although the main character is again an Englishman, many of the other people that are germane to the story are not. This being Jerusalem, we have both Jewish and Arab characters, not to mention a subplot dealing with both the "Dead Sea Scrolls" and the shadowy persona of "Mary Magdalene" and her involvement with Jesus.

Of the two books, this one is the more exotic, both in terms of the various locations, and in terms of the behavior and personalities of the supporting cast. I found the potent plot a bit hard to keep sorted because there was so much going on. The obsessive anguish of the main character pulls everyone else along into places and events that they're barely prepared to deal with. Plus, there was some unavoidable socio/historical commentary that was played out concerning the struggle between the Jewish and Palestinian populations of Jerusalem, and a certain religious undercurrent about the validity of generally accepted Christian history.

This novel brings a more genuine pathological mental-illness slant into the mix, not to mention a whole pervasive dialog about 'demonic possession' , so there is a darker and more desperate tone to the story than that of "Demons". I'm still undecided about whether I was satisfied with the resolution of this story. My personal feeling is that I would have been hard pressed myself to get the viscous stew of this book to come out alright if it was me, so I think Mr. Joyce did a pretty good job with the unwieldy mix he'd concocted.

Kudos to Graham Joyce for his willingness to tackle a subject that could have easily strayed into sensationalistic, gory vaudeville. Instead he kept it on a human scale that was compelling and interesting, and he managed to do it TWICE !!!! I'm looking forward to his other writing... but for now I think I'll see if I can find something else to poke my nose into..

Can a "Hobby Farm" really be a hobby?

BOOK REVIEW--- "Trauma Farm" by Brian Brett. I bypassed this book on the shelves of the library a couple of times before I finally checked it out. The cover was intriguing, but then, you can hardly go wrong with the color red and a chicken. I wasn't sure I was all that interested in someone's take on 'hobby farming', since I knew that wasn't ever a route I was likely to persue myself. In the end, I decided I could at least get someone's take on the whole biz, if for no other reason but to feel like I at least had a sense of what it was all about.

Mr. Brett, living on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, is a poet by trade and an 'amateur' farmer by choice and inclination. He, along with his spouse, have 'farmed' in various capacities for about 18 years. Wise enough to recognize the certain curse of sure poverty that all small farmers struggle to hold at bay, he and his wife have paying jobs that help float their real love of the land and their livestock.

He's constructed the book in such a manner that he can parse the various chapters into the span of what he refers to as an "eighteen year long day". Thus, you are witness to the different modes of daily farm life and operation, and given a considered history of the various changes agriculture has gone through in the last couple of decades. Hardly a dry tome, with many a hilarious event blossoming out of unexpected circumstances, and a warm human history of not only his own family, but also of the community of islanders he shares the land with.

His obvious love for the land and all creatures shines throughout the book, without it being treacly sentimental. As he is wont to point out, the hard realities of death and life are placed in front of you every day, in addition to being lodged under one's fingernails, and tossed on the compost pile. He addresses all manner of farming issues, including "Big Agriculture", use of pesticides and genetic engineering of seedstock, boneheaded regulation from bureaucracies that are in thrall to the 'farming industry' titans, and the sad loss of much of the traditional 'folk wisdom' of farming due to the disappearance of small farms.

Despite the items I've listed above, the book is not a tale of woe, by any means. Mr. Brett has thought long and hard about this whole sphere, and put a lot of work in making sure his views had needed balance. For this reader, one of the things that I keep coming back to as I observe the everyday news is his observation that in farming, like much of the development of the human animal, we've become too clever by half, pointing out that historically we manage to develop increasingly clever tools at a pace that far outstrips the needed wisdom to properly wield them, or consider their ultimate impact on the environment, both natural and social.

I hope this is enough of a teaser to get you to read his book. I still don't have any desire to put in a huge garden, or get some chickens, but he has managed to at least convince me that my love of the land and my respect for the people who choose that life is not misplaced. Hmmm... I wonder if Wendell Berry knows this guy? (Four Stars)

feet of clay keep you grounded

I think you have to discard a certain self-consciousness to do a blog. Either that, or you have an overabundance of self-regard, or you're totally clueless about how others see you, or you're like me.. of an age when it's hardly worth wondering what the majority of the herd thinks about your behavior. In Casteneda's writings one of the main themes is that Death is your constant companion. Now that the mists are clearing around the 'finish line', the hovering of this particular daemon gets a bit more noticeable for me, and the muttering of the masses carries less and less weight in my world. So... 'word mincing' isn't likely to be one of my personal guidelines as I go forward (backward?) with my writing here.

Vinegar and sugarcane

It's already '2010'? Damn, here I am still trying to slog through the debris and wreckage of 2009. Actually... what's 'a year'? To me, it's the cycle of the seasons rather than a grid of 'holidays', appointments, and payments due. That 'New Year's' thing has more the feeling of standing at the edge of a cliff trying to talk myself into not backing up into my 'old' life, while my spectators are watching and calling for me to jump. You guys go ahead on.....