He's a Keeper

I've finished reading the first two (of three so far) Mick Oberon "Jobs" by Ari Marmell. Good stuff. Mick is a very cool guy, for being one of the Fae and all. The second book, Hallow Point, is a complex romp through 1930s Chicago, and the strange imitation of our world that the Fae have created in their own world (and if Ari Marmell wasn't inspired by my favorite Star Trek episode, "A Piece of the Action," then I'll dress up as Oberon the wolfhound for Halloween!). Anyhoo, one of the interesting aspects of this series is that Marmell carries through several plot points through more than one book. So in the first book, Hot Lead, Cold Iron, we learn that Mick often accepts barters from clients as payment for his private investigative work. Sometimes, Mick isn't sure why he asks for certain things, but he follows his Fae instincts and collects various items in an office drawer. One such item from Mick's "drawer of oddities" turns out to be quite useful in book two, and Mick is justified in his hoarding. Or prescience. Depending on your perspective. Which raises interesting questions about keepers and tossers. I'm a tosser. My husband is a keeper. It makes for tense times when we clean out our closet. Or even our refrigerator.  There is a conflicting worldview between the keepers and the tossers, one that cannot be easily resolved. It goes to a fairly deep place of trust in the Universe, feelings of abundance versus scarcity, and moral imperatives to redistribute wealth and prosperity a bit more equitably. It is about the dichotomy between those who pass things along and those who keep stuff for themselves. Our individual proclivities to keep, toss (or give away) also say a lot about who we are as people, with the keepers and the passers seeming morally superior to those who contribute to landfills simply because they cannot be bothered to find a good home for those items they no longer want or need (not that I have an opinion on this topic or anything).

One person's garbage is another's treasure. Whenever I'm tempted to think something is rubbish, in the literal sense of that word, I'm reminded of someone I know who is the queen of free cycling. This woman free cycles everything, from last week's newspapers to egg cartons to plastic ziplock bags. She finds homes for stuff I wouldn't normally think twice about recycling or taking to the dump. But her actions have caused me to stop and think even more than twice and to consider re-purposing before trashing (she gives her old newspapers to a fellow free cycler who has pet rabbits to line the cages). Apparently, there is almost always someone who wants our garbage. Or what we think of as garbage. 

If we're not fans of free cycling, there is Goodwill or the myriad church thrift stores or consignment shops that accept our used clothes, books, furniture, kitchenware, etc. I love these places, and have donated mountains of stuff over the years. Personally, I have two rules that have served me well in terms of keeping my home fairly clutter free and satisfying my desire to share the wealth I've been blessed with. I do not practice perfectly, but I do try my best. The first is the One-Year rule:  if I haven't used it or worn it in a year, it gets given away to someone who will use it more often than I do. The second rule is One-In, One-Out. I'm less good about this one, which states that if I buy a new pair of jeans, I give away an old pair. But it's a good rule. We used to do this with our kids at Christmas and birthdays. It helped (I hope) to encourage them to realize that not everyone has what they do, and no one needs fifteen different colored light sabers (or even five). 

Having said all of this and ensconced myself firmly in the camp of the toss-till-it's-de-cluttered camp, I feel it's only fair to make the case for Mick Oberon and his fellow hoarders—I mean collectors. There is something to be said for finding the exact right item one needs in our "junk" drawer, as Mick does, or in the garage where it's lived for 20 years. This is my husband's philosophy with respect to…everything. "You never know when you might need it!"  Not true; I can state with certainty that I will never, ever need a 30-year-old oxygen tank that has not been used or inspected in 25 years when I go scuba diving.  I enjoy breathing, even underwater, and plan to continue until my dying day, which I prefer to be in the far distant future, far away from water. I'm also pretty confident that I will never use my wedding dress again, and I have no daughters, so that could probably go as well.

But my examples are somewhat extreme and cut-and-dried (although we still have that oxygen tank plus his ancient BC vest that we have never taken with us on a diving vacation and my wedding dress is in the same box it was stored in 21 years ago—but we were moving on…). What about more ambiguous examples? Like my children's "art" from elementary school?  Or framed wall pictures of me as a little girl that used to hang in my mother's house before she died?  I feel bad throwing that shit away, but who would want it? It would be creepy for me to hang baby pix of myself in my house, and neither of my kids will be mistaken for Picasso, so I don't think their childhood drawings will have any value.

And what happens when we down size and de-cluttering is an imperative rather than a satisfying way to avoid writing (oh, did I say that out loud?)? I've never understood the idea of the offsite storage unit. Unless you're a criminal, in which case it makes a more sense. But why would we want our stuff somewhere on the other side of the railroad tracks in some creepy warehouse that I'd never want to visit lest said criminals decided to lure me into their portable pseudo-operating room to perform surgery without anesthesia?  Maybe I've been watching too many episodes of Criminal Minds, but still, you know what I'm saying. 

The way I figure it, I can go through my crap now and make sure I've sorted and stored the things that I truly value and need…or my kids can have that happy task when I kick the bucket sometime down the road. It seems unfair to burden my sons with such a thankless job, so my plan is to do it myself. Preferably while my husband is otherwise occupied.  So I can finally trash that stupid tank. And his monogrammed bowling ball. Mustn't forget that. I doubt even Mick Oberon, which his penchant for odd items, would accept that ball as barter for finding my lost dog. If I had lost my dog, that is. On the other hand, one never knows when a monogrammed bowling ball might come in handy. You know, for bowling. Maybe. Someday. 

It's Better to Be Lucky than Good

I'm still thinking about Hot Lead, Cold Iron, the first of the Mick Oberon "jobs" (books) in the series.  Mick is a member of the Fae, but he's in exile on Earth from Elphame (Faerie) for sins not yet disclosed. He’s busy making a living as a PI in 1930s Chicago and working his particular brand of magic. One of the original elements of this series and its world building is the specific nature of Mick's magic—the way he manipulates luck to his advantage and the disadvantage of his foes.  I've never read anything quite like it, and, of course, it got me to thinking, as I am wont to do. I've often heard the expression, "It's better to be lucky than good."  I've also heard that, "The harder I worked, the luckier I got."  And, finally, we have the admonition that luck is a backstabbing bitch, deserting us when we need her most. So, let's explore the concept of luck and the role that it plays in our lives. 

The way Mick works his magic is to gather small strands of luck around himself, adding to the probability that a plan will go his way, or he will be the victor in a fight. If the odds are against him, his magic will ensure that odds are “ever in his favor.” Think about how important it would be to ensure that at the moment we walk up to the stage, we don’t trip on our dress (like Jennifer Lawrence at the Oscars), or fall on our asses (like Madonna in concert). Manipulating luck would mean that our flies would never be open at a particularly inopportune time, nor would we have toilet paper stuck to our heels or lettuce in between our front teeth for the world to see. Being lucky means being in the right place at the right time to meet the man or woman of our dreams, to be spotted by the person who will make our career, or to be able to take advantage of an opportunity. Luck means clear skies for our Ireland vacation, even though it rains there most of the year, or seeing the top of the Arenal volcano in Costa Rica, even though we were only there for a couple of hours and some wait weeks to catch a glimpse of the summit. It’s good to be lucky.

But luck is not always with us. We anthropomorphize luck as a fickle woman, favoring us one moment and abandoning us the next, and there is some truth to the randomness of her affections. As an aside, I notice that we don’t imbue men with those characteristics (it’s always women who are fickle), but I digress. Regardless of the sexist nature of the personification of luck, it is true that luck doesn’t seem to be something we can count on, although it sure does seem to visit some more than others.

Some of us are born lucky. My husband is like that; my former fiancé was not. And that was something I considered in ending the engagement to one and going through with the marriage to the other. Not the only thing, mind you, but one conscious consideration. My husband seems to walk under a golden cloud. Almost everything he touches works out, and he has the best parking karma of anyone I’ve ever known. Of course, as I write this, I am stressing that in highlighting his luck, the woman in question will leave him flat, but I’m going to have some faith that she’ll continue to grace him with her presence. My former fiancé, on the other hand, couldn’t help but take the hard way home every single time. Life just seemed to come with difficulty for him. He was aware of his paucity of luck, and he worked hard to make sure that he was good enough to rise above any bad luck that came his way.

The other aspect of Mick’s magic is equally brilliant. By stealing the luck of his opponents, Mick doubly magnifies his chances for success. It’s a win-win, although this aspect of his luck smacks a bit of schadenfreude, and I’m not sure I am comfortable hoping for the same sort of ability for myself. Because while increasing my own luck seems like a neat trick, taking away the good fortune of others seems somewhat nasty to me, and if we believe in the karmic version of luck (which I haven’t seen so far in Mick’s case), then stealing others’ fortune will come back to bite us in the ass with a vengeance down the road. But if luck isn’t a zero sum game, then it might be just fine to amp up our own share and safeguard ourselves again trouble and strife. Or just make sure we get good parking whenever possible.  

Of Signs and Symbols

I've started a new series, although I'm not quite sure where I found it. Hot Lead, Cold Iron by Ari Marmell is the first Mick Oberon "job" (story/book) and it's different enough to be intriguing. The book is an homage to the hard boiled dick novels of the early and mid-twentieth century coupled with faithful adherence to the traditional tropes of urban fantasy in the style of Jim Butcher and Kevin Hearne, with language from my favorite Star Trek episode, A Piece of the Action thrown in for good measure. What could be bad?  Turns out, nothing. The book is a delightful discovery and my only disappointment is that there are only three books so far in the series. I am also indebted to the author for highlighting an oversight in my understanding of magic, which I've discussed before. I've always said that the formula for magic was focus, energy and intention. What I forgot, and Mick Oberon reminded me, is that the language of magic is symbolism.   One of the reasons I forgot about symbolism is that it is a dying language, kind of like Latin (cognates of which are a favorite among wizards, druids and magical beings everywhere—expelliarmus!). But signs and symbols have always been a part of spell casting and magic generally. Think about salt circles, pentagram, ruins and the symbolism of the Tarot deck—any deck, really, although Rider-Waite is the classic and it is heavily symbolic. Symbols often mark a hidden path; think The DaVinci Code, cairns along twisted forest trail, or any treasure map worth its name.

Symbolism is esoteric and implicit. It can be subtle and often requires thought and decoding to understand. We live in a world of instant gratification and spoon-fed opinions and entertainment. We have no patience for anything that isn't in-your-face obvious. It's supposed to be like that, otherwise, why use signs and symbols? The problem for the modern mind is that symbolism has depth and most of us think depth is overrated. 

Except, of course, it's not. Depth is there regardless of whether we choose to acknowledge it. Symbols and signs often constitute the pathway that leads us to our own depths, as well as deep places outside ourselves. And most esoteric spiritual and religious books and teachings use the language of symbols so that if a seeker really wants the knowledge, she has to work for it. Very little of what comes easily is valued. Those who illuminate an obscure path with symbolic clues know this.

Symbolism is the language of dreams and, as such, a gateway to our unconscious minds. When we dream about showing up naked to a test, it's not because we actually fear that we'll forget to dress. Those dreams are about vulnerability and exposure. The symbolism of dreams is so well documented, in fact, that one can read books (or Google) the symbolism of dreams. My mother-in-law taught a class on the subject some years ago. There is a lot there to explore in our dreams. And it's all about the symbols.  

Depth psychology is almost exclusively an illumination of symbols and what they point to in terms of our patterns and neuroses. By exposing that to which the symbols refer, we can begin to understand the motivations behind self-destructive or outwardly destructive behaviors. We peel the layers back one by one, digging deeper and deeper into the symbolism of the unconscious mind and this process is supposedly very healing to old wounds. 

Symbols are the language of both spirituality and religion. A cross is a symbol, the Star of David is a symbol, and a candle in a window is a symbol. We all know what they mean, although they can mean different things to different people. That's what makes them interesting and subtle and subject to interpretation. There is a great deal of symbolism in each of the western religions (I'm sure in the east as well, but I'm not as familiar with those traditions). The wafer in the mass, Elijah's cup, a Muslim woman's headscarf. These are all symbols of something else that point to the Divine and humanity's place in relation to the infinite. Fascinating stuff.

Symbols can stir deep emotions. Think about someone burning an American flag. It's just a piece of cloth. Except it's not. Think about Serrano's Immersion, otherwise known as the "Piss Christ." It's just a piece of plastic submerged in a cup of urine. Gross? Yes.  But unless we imbue that piece of plastic with some meaning beyond its constituent parts, it's not a big deal. If we see meaning beyond the explicit in that plastic crucifix, then yes, that changes the whole equation.

Finally, symbolism is the language of the imagination. Our creativity is fueled by signs and symbols. We draw and paint and write in symbols. My personal favorite, of course, is the writing part of creativity, and my very favorite thing to do is to write and read creative analogies, many of which involve symbolism and one thing pointing to another. In fact, I've always wanted to write a book with the best analogies and metaphors I've read in my many literary travels. Hot Lead, Cold Iron has oodles of them; I'm in analogy heaven, and my imagination is swirling.

I'm indebted to Ari Marmell for this imaginative, symbolic gambol through an alternate 1930s Chicago and some instruction on the necessary ingredients  of magic and mayhem. I love symbolism and I'm always looking for signs. I can find meaning in the random order of my iTunes playlist, completely sure I'm receiving messages from the Universe, as well as the specific positions of magazines in a doctor's waiting room. Needless to say, with this book, I'm in my element and having a rip-roaring good time.