The Wheel of Time: Thoughts on Multicultural Casting in Fantasy

See above, please. Craziness happened when I upoaded this one!

The Poor Man's Sting Speaks

It occurs to me that my life is full of miniature representations of dreams that I have had. It is as if I have taken the things I have always wished for and placed them around me, like knickknacks.

Not me.

First, I am a poor man's Sting. (Well, maybe a destitute man's Sting.) I don't say this to compare talent levels, but to show that where he is a former English teacher who worked in clubs as a musician and went on to become one of the most famous popular musicians of all time, I, too, am a bookish fellow who became a teacher of literature and who remaines a very active musician (of whom few have heard). A result of his having been one of my musical and lyrical heroes? Partly.

As a teenager, I wanted to be John Williams (the film/orchestral composer) but that hasn't happened; though, I did score a full-length independent film. So, I, you know, have done it, at least.

No word on an Oscar yet.

On Leaving Home

It occurred to me, the other day, that some see "home" as a cocoon; a retreat; a place to hide from the world's ugliness for a precious few hours each day. (Okay, guilty as charged.) Others seem to see home as a base of operations; a place to get showered and changed before heading back out; a place for parties; a place that keeps the rain off of one's head. I wonder which is the healthier view.

I'm thinking much in the same way the I did in a recent post: there is a certain uneasiness in having succeeded in taking good advice. You work and work to get yourself conditioned to take that advice, then you either become a weirdo for being one of the few who accomplished the desired outcome, or, you start to wonder if the good advice is really that good after all. 

For instance, we are always told to treasure the moment -- to put less emphasis on the past and the future and think of now; to drink it in and savor the experience. I'm the king of this. This, I've gotten down.

Scattered Backward

The very lighthouse...

During a recent morning drive, I glanced over and caught just a quick glimpse of a set steps -- only two of them -- set into the edge of a green lawn, facing the road. They were concrete and they were older; deeply gray and weathered. There was a trace of a stone path leading up onto the lawn, but it was mostly covered over with grass. There had been a house there, once, long ago -- full of living people trying to make the best of their lives, but now it was just a well-kept lawn.

That kind of thing give me a physical feeling of loss, like a little hole in my chest.

Years ago, while in Dover, England, I remember placing my hand up against the outer wall of a Roman lighthouse, the Pharos. I imagined the hands of the builders and I saw images of legionnaires leaning again the outside, making crude jokes or dreaming of heading home over the channel's waters. 

That same feeling -- "loss" is the best I can do.