A magic realism tangent

Because of my current state of mind, the idea of Saturn’s return makes me think about the (unrelated) war on Saturn that takes places in the amazing, surreal The People of Paper by Salvador Plascencia, which I am currently reading. People hide under the lead shells of mechanical tortoises to evade Saturn’s voyeuristic gaze!

For more fantastic works of magic realism, see the likes of Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel García Márquez, Haruki Murakami and Aimee Bender (specifically the books above). I had the privilege of meeting Aimee Bender on November 11 (yes, on 11/11/11) on the Oregon State University campus as part of the 2011-12 OSU Visiting Writers Series. She read a chapter from her new book The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (which I love) and a fantastic short story about prosopagnosia (i.e., face illiteracy or face blindness) called Faces. Magic realism is currently my favorite genre of fiction. Note to self: remember to read more absurdity from Richard Brautigan.

Back to Saturn’s return

The Saturn return calculator revealed that my girlfriend’s Saturn return started on Halloween 2011 and it doesn’t end until July 2012. She deemed this a disturbingly long duration and shook her fist at Saturn for cursing her to suffer its trajectory-altering, life-changing transformations for longer than most. I’ve since learned that Saturn returns usually last about a month.

Being curious, I entered my birthday into the calculator and found that my first Saturn return was of normal length (one month), during which I bought my house and took a two-week trip to Hawai’i. Both of these events had great significance to me. Intrigued, I looked at other notable positions of Saturn throughout my life and immediately noticed a clear theme emerging: transformational travel.

Below is my Saturn return chart, which I’ve self-indulgently annotated.

So, was the schedule of all these transformational travel experiences coincidental, or were they somehow written in the stars (or dictated by a certain ringed planet)? I have no idea. I do find it fascinating that the three most significant eras of my life (so far) were captured by a random astrological calculator on the Internet.

Stop watching me Saturn!

The first two are out-of-print children’s books written in the 1970s by American author Tomie de Paola. I tracked down copies of these short stories after my dad visited Oregon in September and helped me remember a few books he used to read to my sister and me. When Everyone Was Fast Asleep (1976) and the more obscure Songs of the Fog Maiden (1979) both feature the magical, singing Fog Maiden and her blue cat Token. These two characters visit the children of Earth at night and bring them enchanting, fantastical experiences:

When everyone was fast asleep, the Fog Maiden sent Token to wake us up. And we slid through the curtains into the night. We floated across the grass, dancing on the dew, and met the elf horse. We all sang, “Tra la, tra la, too lay, too lay, hop-a-doodle, hip-a-doodle, flip-a-doodle day.” Down the road we went, counting moons until we came to the troll house, but we were not afraid. We ate hot buttered bread and drank warm milk with honey, and dressed for the ball at the palace. The crocodiles danced a quadrille and the peacocks waltzed with doves and we all sang, “Tra la, tra la, too lay, too lay, hop-a-doodle, hip-a-doodle, flip-a-doodle day.” When the king and queen arrived, the play began. The lion roared while the gypsy slept, and the princess was saved by the sand serpent. The night was over and the Fog Maiden came to cover everything with her dress. She picked us up and floated over the trees to our very own window, where she tucked us into our beds and kissed us asleep.

Now if that isn’t an alien abduction story, I don’t know what is. You miss some context without the illustrations, but the premise of When Everyone Was Fast Asleep is that a large-eyed animal (or therianthrope) peers into your bedroom window at night and whisks you away to an alternate, overwhelming realm of anthropomorphic entities.

(Note: I have illustrated the Fog Maiden and Token the Cat as 8-bit characters for Mascot Mashup, my daily pixel art project; they are scheduled to appear on November 10 and 11.)

The third book, Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind (2007) by Graham Hancock, is about the origins of art, religious ideas, consciousness-altering agents and consciousness itself (and ultimately how these might tie into modern conceptions of fairies, elves, angels, UFOs, alien abductions, DMT, DNA and the spirit world):

Less than 50,000 years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as “the greatest riddle in human history,” all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers. In Supernatural Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious “before-and-after moment” and to discover the truth about the influences that gave birth to the modern human mind.

Hancock’s quest takes him on a detective journey from the stunningly beautiful painted caves of prehistoric France, Spain, and Italy to rock shelters in the mountains of South Africa, where he finds extraordinary Stone Age art. He uncovers clues that lead him to the depths of the Amazon rainforest to drink the powerful hallucinogen Ayahuasca with shamans, whose paintings contain images of “supernatural beings” identical to the animal-human hybrids depicted in prehistoric caves. Hallucinogens such as mescaline also produce visionary encounters with exactly the same beings. Scientists at the cutting edge of consciousness research have begun to consider the possibility that such hallucinations may be real perceptions of other “dimensions.”

More than any other book I’ve read, Supernatural almost unifies (or, at least, neatly gathers) cross-cultural supernatural and paranormal experiences throughout human history. There is much to think about. You might have an existential crisis while reading this book. I highly recommend it.

The fourth book, Wildwood: The Wildwood Chronicles, Book I (2011), is “a spellbinding tale full of wonder, danger, and magic that juxtaposes the thrill of a secret world and modern city life. Original and fresh yet steeped in classic fantasy, this is a novel that could have only come from the imagination of Colin Meloy, celebrated for his inventive and fantastic storytelling as the lead singer of The Decemberists. With dozens of intricate and beautiful illustrations by award-winning artist Carson Ellis, Wildwood is truly a new classic for the twenty-first century.”

I’ll admit that I was first interested in Wildwood because I am a fan of The Decemberists—and because Colin Meloy and his wife Carson Ellis live in Portland, Oregon (which is also the geographic setting for the book). Despite being written for adolescent children, I quite enjoyed Meloy’s esoteric, archaic vocabulary and his antique-weaponry aesthetic (not unlike his quirky songs). Plus there are delightful warring factions of talking forest animals! With 560 sparse pages, it is a fast read (it only took me six hours or so to finish it). Definitely worth the time.

I need to remember to read bizarre children’s books more often. For now, it is time to appreciate the rest of the Day of the Dead. I will eat tamales and drink Mexican hot chocolate.

P.S. I visit How to be a Retronaut regularly and these are some recent posts that inspired me: Nuclear Bunker Mannequins (a secret bunker in England), The Invisible Mother (creepy moms hiding under blankets in old photos), Tunnels of the River Fleet (the largest of London’s subterranean rivers), Rephotographing Budapest (perfect overlay of modern color photos on black & white ones), Twin Peaks: The Last Days (I miss that show) and Video Games Then and Now (I prefer a primitive 8-bit aesthetic).

Aren’t able to get home to see the family this year? Don’t really want to leave the house? Too busy to spend all day cooking? Below are directions for everything a couple needs.

This whole gigantic two-person meal costs about $15 and takes about 25 minutes to prepare all the sides, which is a process you should start once the turkey has been in the oven for about 70 minutes.

Step 1: The Turkey

• Place two thawed turkey drumsticks (about 1 lb. each) into a glass baking pan and sprinkle the drumsticks with seasoned salt, pepper, and garlic salt. Add a little water to the bottom of the pan for moisture and cover the pan with aluminum foil. Bake at 325 degrees for around 90-100 minutes. Uncover pan after about 80 minutes to brown the drumsticks. (Cost: $2.50; Prep time: 5 minutes, plus the time you spent watching cartoons on YouTube or whatever while you waited for it to cook)
  

Step 2: The Sides

Now your turkey has been in the oven for a little over an hour and it’s time for you to begin slaving away to “make” the delicious sides.

Start making the cranberry-orange relish first:

• You’ll need a blender or food processor for this. Rinse and grind up one 12 oz. bag of fresh whole cranberries and three or four (if small) clementine/satsuma mandarin oranges, including the entire orange peel/zest from one or two. Then add up to one-cup sugar to the blended mix. (Cost: $3.50; Prep time: 10-15 minutes, unless your blender really sucks like mine)

(Remember to take the foil off the turkey in the oven.)

What’s your vegetable?

• Rinse and steam 1 lb. of your favorite fresh vegetable, such as broccoli, asparagus, or green beans. (Cost: $2.50; Prep/cook time: 10 minutes)

Then, while the vegetables are steaming, prepare the following two prepackaged, MSG-infused items simultaneously (directions are on the packaging).

Got to have the stuffing:

• Kraft Stove Top Stuffing Mix for Chicken, 6 oz. box (Cost: $1.50; Prep/cook time: 5 minutes)

And, of course, the potatoes:

• Idahoan Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes, 4 oz. pouch (Cost: $1.00; Prep/cook time: 5 minutes)

Lastly:

• Add two bottles of R.W. Knudsen Family (or Martinelli’s) sparkling juice, any flavor, to the festive spread (Cost: $4.00; Prep time: However long it takes you to get them from the refrigerator)

Step 3: The Eating

That’s it. A $15 Thanksgiving dinner for two with only about 30 minutes of actual preparation/cooking time. Serve and enjoy! There will be enough for two to eat until you are both uncomfortably full and want to fall asleep, which is, as we all know, the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

Then, once you wake up from your tryptophan-induced coma, you’ll have to get some pumpkin pie with whipped cream.

Hopefully you thought to make the pie the previous night. Mmm, pie.

Along those same lines, HistoryShots has some really cool poster prints, including The Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music and various political, military, and sports histories.

And there are always Pete Frame’s famous The Complete Rock Family Trees books. Some of the diagrams look a lot like music history mind maps.

Also related to music is The Interactive Road, a research agenda being pursued by the Mobility studio at the Interactive Institute in Stockholm since 2001. “It explores the benefits of increased interaction between individual drivers, and road users in general, to create innovative services and corresponding technology.” One of the projects is called Sound Pryer, which aims to enable joint music listening on the highway and file sharing in traffic. Very interesting stuff that I found accidentally last week.

David Firth posted a new Flash cartoon called “Health Reminder” last Thursday.

A Russian woman who has given 130 street cats a home finds that mealtime can spark a feeding frenzy. Wow. Watch the CNN video. Our apartment complex is going to end up like that room if we don’t get some help with the feral cat population underneath our building.

My mom told me that her elderly brindle Afghan hound, Baby (AKA “the Skeksis” between my brother and I), passed away yesterday from congestive heart failure. From what they can figure, Baby had a heart attack while fighting the only other male dog in their house, a young golden retriever, over breeding rights to the resident female English golden retriever who had just gone into heat for the first time. The stress of the fight was just too much for the equivalent of a 95-year-old man with a bad heart. Perhaps it was a noble death; Baby went out trying to get laid.

(Skeksis, by the way, are the corrupt rulers of the planet Thra in the 1982 Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal, a childhood favorite of mine.)

I had family visiting this past week, so I took some time off work and traveled around with them. We visited the coast a few times and spent some time in Newport. I highly recommend eating at Quimby’s in Newport for lunch, but not necessarily for dinner. Their lunch menu is far superior to their dinner menu (and about half the price). Plus, according to my family of chowder connoisseurs, the clam chowder is the best ever.

And of course we had to pick up a pound or two of saltwater taffy at Aunt Belinda’s Candies on the historic bayfront. Of all the dozens of flavors, I think watermelon might be my favorite. Marionberry is really good too.

(By the way, my family’s flights to and from Oregon stopped in Minneapolis, but they said they weren’t able to see the collapsed interstate bridge in the Mississippi River from the air.)

On Friday I took my family through Silver Falls State Park for a bit of hiking on our way up to OMSI in Portland, where I finally visited the Body Worlds 3 exhibit after thinking about going for the past few weeks.

At OMSI, I was really impressed by the posed displays of “real human bodies,” though about halfway through the exhibit my mom started feeling a bit sickened by the mortality of it all . . . the dehydrated polymer-filled corpses. She was thinking about whom these individuals were that donated their bodies and how/why they might have died. There is a distinct creepiness to the whole thing, perhaps especially in the graphic display of all the skinless sexual organs, knowing that these were/are real people. But it’s definitely a med student’s dream come true, with all of the plastinated muscle and bone structures exposed. I’m glad I experienced it.

I also should mention that part of the Body Worlds exhibition was a big anti-smoking push . . . you know, the lung displays went something like: “This is a normal plastinated lung. This is a blackened plastinated lung with cancerous tumors. Any questions?”

(If you remember the original “This is your brain on drugs” public service announcements, you should check out the Robot Chicken parody at YouTube.)

I think the Body Worlds 3 show is in its final weeks, for those in the Portland area who haven’t seen it yet. You really ought to.

“I see dead people.”