Tag: tricksters

What kind of tired does the day bring?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Life in general, writing2 Comments

“I suppose the important thing is, if you’re tired, to understand what kind of tired you are. Are you physically tired? Emotionally tired? Spiritually tired? Because there are different ways to deal with each kind of tiredness. For physical tiredness, you need to rest and sleep. For emotional tiredness, sleep is important as well, but so are taking walks in the park, reading books, meeting with friends. For spiritual tiredness, which is a category of its own, the remedy (I think) is something like spending time with trees and looking at the sky. You need to somehow drink in the essence of existence.”  Theodora Goss in “Emotional Energy”

Theodora Goss is one of my favourite authors, so I find a lot to ponder when she steps away from her fantasy fiction and poetry and writes an essay or blog post.

Due to the stomach infection, I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m feeling emotionally tired. Part of that comes from the discomfort of the infection and part of it comes from dealing with doctors, labs, appointments, tests, and procedures. I find all this quite draining for it represents the kind of out-of-control chaos that I find pushing me into a world of fatigue.

While I like stirring things up in a trickster kind of way, I easily done-in when the stirring up is coming from somebody else–or the “system.” Maybe that’s karma. I can dish it out but I can’t take it. Oh hell, I don’t really believe in karma but there are times when one wonders.

I hear about people who run five miles before going to work. They feel better for running and love the kind of tired it brings. Getting up early enough to run and then take a shower before arriving at work on time makes me feel tired. That is, making it happen is a lot of tedious trouble.

People used to say, and maybe they still say it, “different strokes for different folks.” This makes it hard for husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, &c., who get tired for different reasons, often by the very things their spouse or BFF requires. We have to negotiate, I think, with those around us to give us all the freedom we need without draining other people’s energy. That kind of negotiation often makes us tired.

Right now, I’m too tired to figure this out. Needless to say, I would like to feel some positive energy, enough to run five miles even though I don’t want to.

–Malcolm

Those gurus, bless their hearts, say I need a newsletter

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn authors4 Comments

When I went away to college, my parents expected me to write home every couple of days. I said I wasn’t going to do that because I had nothing to say. That was true enough because every day was just like they day before it: I sat in a classroom, ate meals, studied, watched TV, went to bed, got up the next morning and sat in a classroom.

Some writers’ newsletters sound about like that. When they do, they’re so boring we can’t bring ourselves to write them, much less expect you to suffer through reading them. It’s hard enough thinking of something reasonably interesting to put in this blog. Heaven help me if I had to turn out a newsletter three or four times a month.

I’ve toyed with the idea of a fake newsletter. I could name it Trigger Warnings and fill it full of stuff that will push a lot of buttons that shouldn’t be pushed. Some folks used to argue that if a person put something nasty in quotes, they couldn’t be blamed for saying it. Trigger Warnings would be like that. I warn you with some introductory boilerplate, say stuff you don’t want to hear, and then hit the send button.

That kind of thing strikes my fancy because I have a trickster approach to life. If one just doesn’t say a thing, I want to say it.

Since quotation marks absolve me of misspeaking–as politicians often say–I could begin my newsletter with “Dear Bastards” and it would be okay. So then I could say, using an old-fashioned grin symbol <g> that while I appreciate your “congrats,” “great story,” and other fine comments on Facebook about my novels, I want to point out that if you don’t leave an Amazon reader review, my book is toast.

My wife–who has known me since 1979–is often surprised at what I say while we’re talking to “normal people.” Those “normal people” tend to get drunk after talking to me because I love saying what shouldn’t be said.

Trigger Warning: This might make you sick

Presumably, “normal people” would sign up for my newsletter and then immediately unsubscribe the first time I wrote about roadkill salad. On the plus side, roadkill salad is free unless you add mayo. And chopped pecans.

But I would want to be honest. That means if I was thinking about writing a poem about “roadkill salad,” I would have to tell you that and see what you thought. Sure, you might need a couple of Xanax to get through the newsletter, but it would still be liberating. See, that’s what tricksters do. We liberate you from everything that makes you sick, embarrassed, crazy, and politically inept.

Or, I might suggest that every subscriber had to buy 1,000 copies of my books and give them to relatives, prisoners, and random people on the street.

You can see, can’t you, why I don’t really think this newsletter is a great idea?

—Malcolm

 

 

 

Grandfathers: protectors and tricksters

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn magic, The Sun Singer6 Comments
The mini-golf ant is fake, or is it?

My mother’s father was a solid, responsible grandfather when it came to driving a nail straight, shooting a flawless game of pool, and finding where the fish were hiding in the river. He worked as a farmer, an auditor and a car salesman, so he knew a lot about the practical nuts and bolts of the world.  He also knew what was wrong with it and what was dangerous, so he was among my childhood protectors and instructors.

He also saw the humor in the unexpected, lurching out of dark shadows at night, playing practical jokes, and becoming a conspirator in the wild, imaginary tales my two brothers and I cooked up.

As a fan on tricksters in myths and legends, my first lessons in combining fact and fiction, the sacred and the profane and the practical and the ludicrous came from my Grandfather Gourley. As a child and a young adult, I simply saw that Grandpa liked making people laugh. Now, I wonder if he had somewhat of a trickster’s mindset: that is, creating the laugh as part of a learning experience?

In my novel The Sun Singer, my Grandfather Elliott character—who has as lot in common with my grandfather—is the one who stirs things up. Since my novel is an adventure story, Elliott’s grandson Robert gets into some dangerous situations because things got stirred up. Needless to say, Robert’s parents aren’t pleased when things get stirred up. After all, they expect grandfathers to serve as wise protectors.

My grandfather lived in Illinois. I lived in Florida. So, for many years I only saw in on vacations. Ultimately, he and grandmother moved to Florida, finding a house about four blocks away from us. My parents liked the arrangement for all the usual reasons about having family close rather than far away. I wonder, though, if my parents noticed that after grandfather came to town, things got stirred up more than  ever. My mother often told stories about the practical jokes her father played on her when she was a kid.

So, she had to know that having Grandfather Gourley in our neighborhood was somewhat like having a coyote or a fox in the hen house. When things went nuts, Grandfather acted innocent like he had no clue what could have possibly caused the latest hijinks. From him, I learned how to keep a straight face while household weirdness played itself out. While visiting my granddaughter last week, who is still very literal when it comes to the meanings of things said and done, I quite naturally felt a need to protect her from all possible harm and unpleasantness.

Yet, I also began my sacred task as a grandfather: working on getting her more acquainted with the figurative. (In small doeses, of course.)  My grandfather helped teach me about humor, magic, and the benefits of managed chaos. That’s a tradition I want to continue.

–Malcolm