#poetryfriday: job interview #1

It’s a story I know I’ve told before, but for some reason I felt like tackling it as a poem. I was in college. desperate for a job, any job.  There was a cafe in Berkeley taking applications. Seemed straightforward enough…

job interview #1

chuck taylors
worn levi’s
white cotton oxford

nothing too new
nothing dirty

applicants daily
between one and two
see jan

“why?” says jan
“everyone here
seems happy.”
jan smirks

“we audition
the position”

rubber apron
spray and load
unload, stack, repeat

scalding dishes
heat-burnt fingers
sweat soaked shirt

kitchen staff
shake their heads

“sorry,” says jan
“here’s a coupon.
lunch on us.”

lessons learned:

true dishwashers
don’t audition

smirking isn’t
happiness

 

And as a matter of fact, i did have experience as a dishwasher for the student co-op I lived in, but there was something else going on, I later learned. They “auditioned” lots of applicants whenever they were short-staffed and needed people to give their dishwasher’s a lunch break. Taking advantage of children and young adults in the workplace, a Great American Tradition since the dawn of the Industrial Age!

It’s Poetry Friday again, all covered in whipped cream and other delights.  Elaine at Wild Rose Reader has the roundup this week.

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the new grimmoire: king obvious

King Obvious

There once was a king with out a name who had three daughter: Nina, Pinta, and his youngest and most beloved, Santa Maria. This king didn’t have a name because it’s not his story.  Let’s call him King Lear.  Forget him.

Nearby was another king who did have a name, King Ironhead.  Clearly he named himself, though he could have called himself King Cherrypicker, King Hammerhead, King Codpiece or anything else befitting a king of such arrogance.  For this the people just called him King Obvious.

This King Obvious was the love-em-and-leave-em sort, and everyone knew it.  When there was even a rumor that King Obvious was on the prowl entire villages suddenly became ghost towns. King Lear knew this and expressly instructed his daughters never to let King Obvious within the castle walls.  This both infuriated King Obvious, and if the girls had kept him out of the castle the story would be over right here.

A war erupted, and King Lear left his daughters behind because this is the way men behave.  As a parting gift, perhaps as tokens to remember him by in case he died, he gave them each a dove, a ruby, and a rosemary bush (clearly King Obvious didn’t have a monopoly on symbolism) and warned them that if they couldn’t produce these gifts upon his return then he would know they lost their virginity. Of course, he assumed they still had their virginity to begin with, and if he didn’t return the whole virginity question would be moot.

Not trusting his daughters at all, King Lear locked them in the castle and rigged a basket in a rope from a high window in order for them to retrieve food.  And with a warning wag of his finger he was off for war.  So thoughtful of him.

King Obvious was not pleased. He probably instigated the war that King Lear went off to fight, because for some reason he felt no obligation to fight this particular battle.  No, he most likely created false pretenses for the war so he could find some way to deflower the daughters of King Lear.  But what to do about this problem of girls in the high tower?

Well, naturally, he disguised himself as a woman and crawled into the food basket.  And just to make sure the girls hauled him up he moaned and groaned.

“Oh, woe!  I am an old woman in a basket! I am dying of cold and hunger! Oh, dear girls, please help a horny old lady!”

“Did she say thorny?” said Nina?

“I think she said lonely,” said Pinta.

And since the older girls were as dumb as tree stumps they ran to Santa Maria to settle their argument.

“Listen,” said Santa Maria, “That’s probably a wolf dressed up as someone’s granny down there.  Just toss down some old bread crusts and ignore her.”

But because the older girls were a pair of dunderheaded tree weasels they decided to a good deed and haul up the old woman to show Santa Maria how wrong she was about the old woman.  Ah, but you probably guessed what happened next.  King Obvious jumped out of he basket, whipped of his disguise and shouted “Ha Hah!  Now I’ve got you, my pretties!”

Then he added.

“Here’s the deal.  Let’s play spin the bottle and the loser has to spend five minutes in the closet with me.”

“Five minutes?” snorted Santa Maria.  “I’ve heard it’s more like two minutes.”

“That’s it!  You lose, insolent brat!  Into the closet!”

“Can I have a few minutes to prepare myself?”

“Naturally.  It isn’t like I suspect you’re going to try to trick me or anything.”

With that, Santa Maria went to her room and moved all her furniture to the privy. Now what you have to understand about castles is that while they didn’t have plumbing they did have indoor toilets.  Mostly they were old wooden thrones with holes cut in their seats placed over a massive stone pit that emptied into the moat down below.  All Santa Maria did was arrange the privy room so it looked like her bedroom (albeit a bit small) with a run carefully placed over the privy hole.  Then she took off several layers of clothing and arranged herself on the bed before calling King Obvious in.

“Come join me, dear King,” Santa Maria said, patting the space on the bed next to her.

“Oh no,” said King Obvious.  “I know you’ve cut a hole in the mattress so that I fall through to the moat.  No, you come here and join me on the rug—”

And with that, King Obvious fell into the castle sewage with no way out but to swim out.

Furious, he summoned a sorcerer.  The idea was to torture Santa Maria by attacking her sisters.  His plan was to make Nina and Pinta pregnant and desire only things that belonged to King Obvious.

“You don’t need me for that,” said the sorcerer. “Those girls would believe anything you told them, and you can get them pregnant for yourself.”

Which he did, though how is beside the point right here.

Needless to say, soon the pregnant girls began having strange cravings.  The wanted apples and figs and other obvious symbols of Original Sin from Christianity, and it just so happened that King Obvious possessed just those fruits by the orchard.  But since the girls were still locked up in the castle, and he knew the only one who could shimmy up and down the rope from their high window was Santa Maria, he devised a clever torture device to get back at her.

Get this: It was a barrel lined with nails that once you climbed inside you could not climb out without severe injury.  The plan was to lure Santa Maria to come collect some fruit in place of her feeble-minded sisters and then punishing her for stealing his fruit by forcing her to go head-first into the barrel. Do you want to guess how much this didn’t work?

Using an old trick from a Punch and Judy show she once saw, Santa Maria convinced King Obvious to (are you ready?) show her how to do it.  So King Obvious, who was clearly a dolt, dove into the barrel and got himself stuck.  Oh, he howled and howled, and his servants were slow to help him out.  The official line was that he had instructed them to ignore any wailing because he wanted Santa Maria to suffer, but it’s probably closer to the truth that his servants were as fed up with him as everyone else and left him there for a bit.

Unhappy that King Obvious would go to such lengths to harm her, Santa Maria took it upon herself to rub it in.  She posed as a doctor and made herself available to help King Obvious and showed up with a giant ox skin soaked in vinegar.  The King, desperate to heal from his self-inflicted stupidity, overlooked that the doctor looked suspiciously like Santa Maria.  The “doctor” insisted that King Obvious be left alone and that after she administered her “medicine” the king’s servants were not to respond if the king cried out in pain.  The servants, sensing something dastardly was about to happen to their king, retreated to the cellar and proceeded to drink themselves into a stupor.

Santa Maria took the ox skin and sewed King Obvious into it like a giant cocoon with just his head sticking out.  “An hour or so of that will do you good,” she said.  Shortly after she left the vinegar from the hide began to soak into and sting the king’s wounds and he howled like a man possessed.  In the middle of the night, when one of the passed out servants awoke from his drunken stupor to hear the wailing of the king, he wrote it off as a pair of nearby bears mating and went back to sleep.
King Obvious eventually passed out from the pain and was delirious for a week afterward.

It just goes on and on like this, with King Obvious four more times trying to catch Santa Maria and always managing to be bested by her, sometimes in the most gruesome of exchanges.  If people took joy in the sadism of these accounts, of watching great leaders taking a tumble, than surely this must be something locked deep into our reptile brains.  At one point Nina and Pinta have their ill-begotten love children and Santa Maria devises a way secretly dump them on King Obvious, who promptly stuffs them into a corner where they’re forgotten.

Finally, King Lear returns and the first thing he wants to see are the gifts he left them.  Santa Maria goes first and produces her dove, her ruby, and her rosemary bush and the king is satisfied.  She quickly hands her gifts to Pinta who presents them as her own because, clearly, she’s no longer a virgin and her dove is gone and her rosemary bush has gone all… woody, or something.  Then Nina comes in and tries to pass off Santa Maria’s dove and ruby and bush off as her own and—

“Hold on a second,” says King Lear.  “I want to see all your birds and bushes at the same time.”

At which point the older sisters fall to their knees crying and confess and beg their father for forgiveness. Naturally, he’s pissed, and once he learns that King Obvious was responsible he charges next door to give him a good piece of his mind.

“Father!” King Obvious shouts as King Lear enters his chamber.

“Uh, what?”

“I was just trying it out, calling you dad.  Sounds nice.  I like the ring of it.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I want to marry Santa Maria!  That would make you my father!”

“Oh.  Well.  That’s just fine!”

Somehow the fact that he’d deflowered his other two daughters is as forgotten as the offspring they produced, and kings being what they were they set about planning the wedding.

“I have no intention of marrying that lout!” said Santa Maria.

But her father didn’t care, and so the wedding went ahead as scheduled.

Of course, Santa Maria had one final prank to pull on King Obvious.  On the night of her wedding she had a lambskin sewn to her shape and size and filled it with the entrails of all the beasts served at her nuptial meal. She carefully placed it in her bed and threw the covers over it so it looked like her, then climbed under the bed and waited.  King Obvious came in, doused the candles, and proceeded to get undressed. As he stood there fully naked he cleared his throat to catch his wife’s attention.

“Lay down your dagger and draw up your sword, oh husband.”

“What dagger?”

“That one I can see clearly in your hand.  Or is that… oh! I see!  It’s like when they call a bald man curly.  King Ironhead?  Henceforth, husband, I shall call you King Pollywog!”

“Draw up my sword, you say?”

King Obvious reached over and grabbed his broadsword and hacked away at the fake wife in his bed until it was a gory mess.  When he was done, when he realized that he’d killed the one person who could outsmart him, he was beside himself with grief.  He was so upset that he turned his sword upon himself and as he watched his life drain out before him Santa Maria crawled out from under the bed to watch.

“I will miss our sparring, King, but you will not be missed,” Santa Maria said.

While the rest of the kingdom slept, Santa Maria loaded up a carriage full of gold and disappeared, never to be heard from again.

And she lived happily ever after, but everyone else was left guessing.

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c. 2011 david elzey

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#poetryfriday: in flu

I’m about 99% over the flu now.  I was in denial for a long time about having the flu this season because I really had the full-blown flu back in 2001 and that practically killed me. I had fever and hallucinations for days and i vowed I would never call an illness the flu unless is truly was as brain-boiling as that last time.  This year I apparently caught a strain that didn’t involve fever but left me feeling pretty cruddy at times.

Anyway, I was combing some computer files and I found something I wrote about five years ago with a title I didn’t recognize.  Turns out “What a Mess” is actually a poem I wrote about having the flu!  Clearly it needed some work (and a new title) but it seemed to have found me at the right moment all these years later, and so.

in flu

When your ears fall off in the middle of the night,
And they slip beneath the mattress
Where they’re hidden from your sight,
Can you hear the bedbugs chomping,
Or the dust bunnies clip-clomping?
When your ears fall off in the middle of the night.

When your nose drops off as you’re getting out of bed,
And goes running to the closet
Where it hides behind a sled,
Do you slip upon the trail
That it leaves just like a snail?
When your nose drops off as you’re getting out of bed.

When your tongue rolls out and flops down on the floor,
And it slithers like a python
As it ripples toward the door,
Do you round it up like cattle
In heroic epic battle?
When your tongue rolls out and flops down on the floor.

When your eyes pop out while you’re sitting there in class,
As they skitter off the table
Where they shatter just like glass,
Do you put them back together
With glue made from old shoe leather?
When your eyes pop out while you’re sitting there in class.

As your head caves in sometime shortly after noon,
When your brains ooze out your ear holes
And you catch them with a spoon
And your skull has turned to chowder
And your teeth have ground to powder
As your head deflates like an empty old balloon…

There’s no way you can deny it
So you must admit it’s true
That it’s not some crazy diet
You are dealing with the flu!

Poetry Friday, and all the poems you can eat! (it’s a Bugs Bunny reference, sort of.) Tara at A Teaching Life has the roundup today.  Head on over for more goodness!

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the new grimmoire: sausage mouse

Sausage and Mouse were the best of friends and were inseparable. They were poor but happy and lived together in their tiny little flat.  Once a week they would set up two large vats of hot water by the fire, one to bathe in and one to cook their weekly supply of boiled cabbage.  One week Mouse would bathe and then go to church while Sausage stayed home and boiled the cabbage, the following week Sausage would bathe and go to church while Mouse stayed home and cooked.  It was an unusual arrangement, to be sure, but one born of time and familiarity and mutual adoration.

One week after Mouse had bathed and left for church Sausage accidentally dumped the weekly cabbage in the bath water.  Afraid that too much of the flavor had already transfered from the cabbage to the bath water Sausage decided to leave it there and hoped Mouse wouldn’t notice anything was wrong.  But Mouse did notice.

“This is the most delectable cabbage ever,” Mouse said.

“I accidentally cooked it in your dirty bath water,” Sausage said.

“It was a most fortunate accident!” Mouse said.  “We should repeat this accident every week!”

And so the next week when it was Sausage’s turn to bathe Mouse stood by with the cabbage.  As the surface of the bath water started to show oily pools Sausage decided it was time to get out.

“First let me taste the water to make sure there is enough flavor.”  Mouse tasted the bath water.  “It’s good, but perhaps just a little bit longer.”

So Sausage stayed in the bath water.  As the water continued to warm by the fire Sausage began to sweat and could feel its body tighten beneath the skin.  Mouse tasted the water again.

“Almost,” Mouse said.  “Perhaps if you dunked your head beneath the surface and counted to one hundred that would be enough time.”

“But–”

“Trust me, Sausage, this will be the best tasting cabbage ever.”

And so Sausage went under the surface.  Before Mouse could reach even half way to one hundred Sausage floated to the surface.

“Poor Sausage,”  Mouse said.  “Well, nothing to be done about it now.”

Mouse removed Sausage and laid it out on the cutting board.  Then gently, lovingly, Mouse sliced Sausage into coins and slid them into the bath water with the cabbage.  That night Mouse lit a candle and toasted Sausage’s memory in feast.

“Although you are not alive, dear Sausage, you can at least participate fully in this wonderful meal you helped create.”

Afterward Mouse curled up in the corner next to the fire and slept long and hard. In the morning Mouse felt a little sad to not find Sausage nearby but the feeling didn’t linger.

There were other Sausages in the world to be had.

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c. 2011 david elzey

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Another of my weekly exercises in re-imagining and adapting tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.

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starting a (literary) band

I was joking about this sort of with my writing buddy Vivian recently in the context of beefing up our critique group, but you know how brains can be.  Once you think or say something it’s out there, and once it’s out there it starts to take a life of its own.

What I said was “Let’s start a band!”  Because that’s sort of what pulling together a crit group together is like, right? A bunch of people with different backgrounds and approaches to playing their particular writing instruments coming together for a common goal. More or less.  We’re looking for a couple new members to help us rock our manuscripts into the best publishable books.

But metaphors aside, I started thinking about how in history there were these times when people would band together and create something so much larger than the sum of their parts. How do talented people find one another? It can’t simply be a question of right-place-right-time and it can’t only be that talented people will always be drawn to one another. And you can’t just want it, or somehow want it more than anyone else, because how many have tried and failed from trying too hard? Is it fate?

Those who know me, or have at least read the tab explaining the name of this blog, will understand my love of Vonnegut. Though it was not a new idea in this or any culture, his explanation of a karass as a group of people coming together for a common goal best explained this underlying sense I had that there was a band out there for me. I’ve had this sense, this feeling, since the 7th grade and you might have thought that the feeling would have faded in the last 35 years, but no.

Though it’s often expressed in terms of musicians and bands, what I’ve more been drawn to were communities that were a little more theatrical. The Monty Python troupe, the initial creators of The National Lampoon, the Comedia delle Arte. Humor, yes, but it wasn’t the theatrics.  There was some mysterious glue that not only would bring these people together but pushed them toward creating something… not just something that wasn’t there before but something different.

That keeps me up some nights, that different.  Everyone wants to create something different, something unique in their art or craft.  Beyond voice, beyond style, something that people can point to as a clear demarcation between before and after.

But what?

What in the world of storytelling can truly be created that’s both different and yet popular, different and familiar? What new school of style or format?  I can’t help but think that I’m carrying around a piece of something larger. There’s a point where the kid playing bass all by himself in the basement thinks maybe there are some kids in the neighborhood who don’t just want a band but want to change the world, even if they don’t really know that’s what they want or how it’s going to happen.

As much as I want that, the reality is that writing is so far from a band or a company or a troupe. It is a solitary endeavor, where even if you could pull together a band of authors all the real work would be taking place in the head or while staring at a computer screen. I suppose a closer analogy would be an art movement with a bunch of like-minded folks creating with similar influences, or from an organized manifesto…

No, I want a band.  A band of writers.  I want to rock and I want to change the world. I’ve got my instrument and I’m pretty sure its in tune. Who’s in, and where do we practice?

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#poetryfriday: the best

This was written after the last snow, not the most recent one that came while I was laid up with this flu thing and couldn’t go out and enjoy it.

the best

the best is when the rains come
a week after heavy snows
to wash away the dirty sludge
of shoveled walkways

archipelagoes of snow hugging sidewalk curbs
tide pools full of gum wrappers
lost gloves and bits of trash
emerging from the snowmelt like fossils
leaving behind the mysteries of how and when
they arrived at that particular layer
of winter’s fossil record

warmer air quickly dries
wet concrete walkways
until cool evening air
hardens the glistening snowcrests
into a candy shell that breaks
with a satisfying crack underfoot

the tension and the snap
the sudden yielding to pressure
like newfound forgiveness
or unconditional love

that sound
that’s the best

It’s Poetry Friday, the peanut butter cup of the Internet. Laura Salas has the roundup this week.

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actual email i sent to the TODAY show

From: delzey@gmail.com

To: TODAY@nbcuni.com

Subject: Snooki Bumps Kidlit

Right,

So some fellow members of the children’s literature community are all up in arms that apparently your fine show made a programming decision to run with a segment on Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi’s new book in favor of a segment on the recent Caldecott and Newbery Award winners.

Good.

Quite honestly, for the last couple of years, the only time I’ve ever watched the TODAY show was for this segment, and I always left with the same reminder to myself: Never watch that show again.  The segment always felt like a backhanded attempt to pander to the New York publishing industry and the parents in your audience who take your token bits of coverage on children’s literature as a sign of quality.

Which is a joke.

It’s clear your hosts never read the winner’s books either before or after the segment.  They have no idea what’s happening in children’s literature (or any literature for that matter) unless it’s been turned into a hit movie, written by a celebrity, or somehow became a hot topic of conversation at cocktail parties. Viewers have come to expect that the hosts just say what’s been prepared for them in advance.

In short, your hosts are probably as culturally illiterate as the average American, which is why the average American tunes in every weekday morning.

So while I’m sure you’re getting a flood of mail from people complaining about your decision I wanted to take this moment to applaud your decision to no longer pretend to care about quality books for children.  I wanted to commend you on losing sight of the opportunity you have to enlighten people across this nation of ours, and instead choose to freely admit that showcasing literature for children for five whole minutes out of your broadcast year is a complete waste of time.  You know that, in the long run, your decision and the feedback it generates won’t really affect your ad revenues or ratings.

Bravo.

And to the bored intern whose job it is to scroll through these emails, chin up! It’s not too late to get out and do something meaningful with your life. Just don’t write a children’s book about it.

Regards,

David Elzey

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the new grimmoire: the old man and the knobby little man

The Old Man and the Knobby Little Man

There once was an Old Man who had grown bored of sitting around his house and decided to go out into the world and become King.  It was an odd notion, to be sure, but like I said he was old and bored and his time was his own.

He left his house without even a change of clothes and soon grew weary walking along the road.  He heard a carriage coming and figured he’d hitch a ride for a while, maybe even get lucky and find a kingdom along the side of the road in need of a new ruler.  When the coach drew near the Old Man noticed that it didn’t have a driver so he hopped up and took the reins.  No sooner had his hands touched the leathers the coach jerked to a stop, throwing the occupant head-first into the carriage wall.

“Horse!  What the blue blazes is wrong with you!”

Out of the coach stepped a Knobby Little Man with a pock-marked face and a beard down to his knees.

“What are you doing with my coach?” said the Knobby Little Man. “That horse obeys no one but me and has been trained to disobey thieves on the road.  You a thief?”

“I saw it was without a driver and thought it might have been running wild,” said the Old Man. “I was only trying to help.”

“Ah, but you didn’t admit you weren’t a thief!” said the Knobby Little Man. “Fair enough.  What do you want?”

“I’ve decided to become a King. I’ve taken to the road to find my destiny.”

The Knobby Little Man looked at the Old Man in disbelief.  Was the Old Man daft?  Had he taken a bullet in some old war that shifted in his brain?  The Knobby Little Man laughed.

“Well, I tell you what.  Until you find your kingdom how’d you like to work for me?  You come with me as my guest and see what I have to offer and then you can decide.”

The Old Man couldn’t be sure the Knobby Little Man wasn’t trying to trick him, but he was hungry and it was getting dark and he figured he could set out to become King the next day.

“Okay,” said the Old Man, “But no funny stuff.”

When the coach arrived at the Knobby Little Man’s place the Old Man whistled. Nestled back from the road was an enormous one hundred room white marble palace, with heated indoor pools, a Roman-style colonnade, and a massive garden full of animal sculptures with their heads cut off.  The Old Man thought it a perfect palace for a king, except for the weird statues.

“Listen,” said the Knobby Little Man, “I’m only home a few hours a month, so here’s the deal: You stay here, feed my horse all the meat it wants, feed my poodle all the hay it can eat, and you can do whatever you like in any of the rooms in my house except the one room with the black door on it.”

“That’s it? Feed the horse, feed the dog, do whatever I want, stay away from the black door?”

“Like I said, I’m hardly ever here,” said the Knobby Old Man, “I don’t know why I still keep this place. What do you say?  It’s like a palace, right?  Call yourself king if you want.”

The Old Man agreed, and was eager for the Knobby Little Man to leave so he could have the place to himself and go exploring.

“Oh, and one last thing. I’ve trained this horse in many things — he’s a very special horse — but no matter what he would have you believe, you must always search your heart for the truth.”

“Okay,” said the Old Man, but what he really wanted to say was “What a crock!  A talking horse?”

And that was the last the Old Man saw of the Knobby Little Man.  With the place to himself he ran around naked jumping in and out of all the heated pools, wore a sheet like a toga and ate standing up in front of the refrigerator, he jumped up and down on the beds and found a library to rival the one said to have been lost at Alexandria. After a few hours of this he wondered if he really wanted to be King or just live in a fancy place and act like one. Then he remembered he had to feed the horse and the poodle.

After watching the Old Man run around the poodle was a little wary of him.  He arranged her hay in a nice neat pile but she didn’t seem interested.  “Suit yourself,” said the Old Man, “You can’t say I didn’t feed you.”

Out in the barn the Old Man found the horse trying to scratch out math problems on the floor.  He set down a bucket of beef brisket but the horse simply snorted.

“Look, I’m only doing what your master said.”

“That makes him your master as well,” said the horse.

“You can talk!”

“Better than you can think for yourself.”

“What do you mean?” said the Old Man.

“Does it make any sense to you, feeding a dog hay and a horse meat?”

The Old Man shook his head.

“Listen, I know he gave you that speech about searching your heart for the truth. What does your heart say about feeding meat to a horse and hay to a dog?’

The Old Man thought about it and without another word he jumped up and brought the bucket-o-brisket to the dog and brought back a bale of hay for the horse.  The horse ate until its belly had threatened to touch the ground, and when the dog was finished she came and curled up in the barn with the horse.

“Wow, you two must have been starved,” said the Old Man.

“You have no idea,” said the horse. “So let me make it up to you.  How would you like to truly be a king, with servants and a treasury full of gold, and people to amuse you all day long.”

“You can do that?”

“There’s a little work involved, but, yeah, I can do that.”

And the horse explained to the Old Man how it would be.  At dawn, the Old Man would need to go into the forbidden room, the one with black door.  Inside the Old Man would find three golden candlesticks.  He would need to grab the candlesticks and hurry out of the room before the door closed and sealed him in the room.  Then the Old Man and the Poodle would climb on the back of the horse and make a run for it.

“And then I’ll be King?”

“Would I lie to you?” said the horse.  The Old Man searched his heart and couldn’t imagine why the horse would lie, and so at dawn he did as he was told and soon they were on the road.

It wasn’t long before they heard the Knobby Little Man running behind them, gaining in speed.

“How can he do that?” said the Old Man.

“Quick!” said the horse, “Throw one of the candlesticks over your shoulder!”

The Old Man did, and when it hit the ground it became a thick river of tar that slowed the Knobby Old Man down.  Soon though the Knobby Old Man had crossed the river and was gaining speed again.

“Your master is unreal!  What do we do now?”

“The second candlestick,” said the horse.

With the second candlestick there appeared a mammoth wall made of jagged glass stones.  It was so high that it went far beyond the tops of the trees.  The horse put some distance between them but soon the Knobby Little Man had scaled the wall, jumped down, and was gaining on them.

“Third time’s the charm,” said the horse.

The third candlestick exploded on impact and became a mountain of sea urchins that buried the Knobby Little Man.  The horse ran for three straight days and in that entire time they never saw the Knobby Little Man again.

The next part of the horse’s plan involved a little bit of effort on the Old Man’s part.

“Let me get this straight,” said the Old Man, “We go down to that valley where two armies are fighting and I enlist with one of the sides. The dog here turns into a suit of armor and we charge out in front of the battle for three days in a row.  Each time we do, the other side gets spooked and backs off and after the third time they make me… the King’s gardener?”

“It’s an incremental plan,” explained the horse. “The last time they promoted a king from an enchanted warrior they later regretted it and vowed never again to promote from the military. But when their king asks you to claim a reward, you ask to work the royal gardens.  They’ve never had an enchanted gardener king before!”

“So, wait. I become a gardener, and then perform some kind of magic—”

“Details, details,” said the horse, “I’ve got you covered.”

“And they promote me to king?”

“Pretty much.”

“And then what?”

“Well…” said the horse, in a drawn out tone that caused the Old Man to worry a little. “Once you’re King, you would finally be in a position to grant the poodle and me a wish.”

“Is this some sort of trick?” said the Old Man.

“Again, this is on you,” said the horse, “Trust your heart.”

The Old Man thought about everything he’d been told.

“This is an awful lot of work to be a King.”

“If I knew a quicker way, I’d tell you,” said the horse.

“Why doesn’t she ever say anything?’ said the Old Man, pointing to the poodle.

“It just doesn’t work that way,” said the horse.

So with a heavy sigh the Old Man agreed, and wore the dog like a magical suit of armor, into battle three times, became an enchanted gardener, and finally, eventually, the Old Man had become the New King.  There followed much feasting and rejoicing, an entire month’s worth of celebrations on the New King’s behalf.  There were nights full of running around naked into heated pools, and days full of jumping on beds, and parties full of people wearing sheets like togas and standing around eating food, only this time he wasn’t alone, this time the New King could pick and choose from among his subjects to join him. He had a full treasury and subjects dedicated to his every whim.

But after nearly a month of this gaiety things calmed down and the New King remembered his promise to the horse. He stole away to the royal stables and found the horse and the poodle nestled into the far corner, sad and forlorn.

“I was beginning to believe you had truly forgotten us,” said the horse.

“A sad oversight on my part, I assure you. I had no idea the celebrations would go on for so long!”

“Shall we get down to business?” said the horse.

“What can I do for you, now that I am king.”

“You must take your royal sword and release us from our prison.”

“Huh?”

“I was once an enchanted prince, bewitched by the Knobby Old Man and turned into a horse, and I can only be released by having my head chopped off by a King who is noble and true.”

“What!” said the New King.

“Arf!” said the poodle, who had never uttered a sound before.

“And her.  She was a princess and my bride-to-be and was likewise bewitched. Cut her head off as well and she will be released.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” said the New King.

“And once you have freed us we can go off and live as happily as the day we first fell in love.”

“Arf! Arf!”

The New King remembered all that had happened, all he had been told and all he had seen.  He had gone out into the world to become a King and he owed everything he was to the cunning and wisdom of the horse. He did not search his heart which would have told him it was wrong, but a month of royal celebration had dulled his senses and clouded his thinking.  Without a further second of hesitation the King took his sword and swiftly chopped off their heads with a single blow. He thought there might have been a blinding light or a puff of smoke but nothing happened. All he saw before him were the heads of the horse and the dog on the ground facing one other.

“Why did you do that?!” said the horse.

“It’s what you told me to do!” said the King

“I told you he’d fail,” said the dog, who had a very lovely voice after all.

“I did everything else you told me to do and it all worked out perfectly!” said the King.

“You forgot,” said the dog. “The one time you forgot to remind him.”

“Remind me of what?” said the King.

“Your heart…” said the horse, who was starting to lose consciousness. “I forgot… to remind you… to search your… heart for… the…”

And the horse closed his eyes and he was dead, as was the poodle.

Then a fog appeared, an ominous fog that smelled of low tide and swallowed up the kingdom leaving the New King alone in a bog.  And out of the fog came a voice.

“Turns out you were a thief after all.  Then again, you never said you weren’t, so you got that going for you.”

The fog cleared a little and a figure stepped into the clearing.

“You almost made it, all of you,” said the Knobby Little Man.  “You were all so very close.  If you had forgotten your promise for just one more day the horse would have lost his ability to talk and you would have gone mad trying to convince your subjects that he had once given you counsel.  Your subjects would have banished you and killed the horse and the dog and been done with you all.”

“But I didn’t forget,” said the New King, a creeping sense of dread climbing up his spine as the Knobby Little Man stepped closer.

“No, you remembered just in time. Then you were supposed to refuse to chop off their heads, the horse would insist, you refuse a second time, the dog was supposed to bite you, and then you would throw down your sword and they would be released and I would be vanished.  Just like that, you all would have lived as if in a fairy tale, happily ever.”

“A test,” said the New King.  “It was a test of my faith.”

“Eh, call it what you will. It was all part of the spell. The dog was good, though. If she spoke at any point along the way it would have been the same as you lobbing of their heads.”

“So you’ve been waiting for one of us to make a mistake, waiting to step forward and punish us?”

“Actually, I caught up with you as fast as I could.  I had to eat my way from beneath that mountain of sea urchins.  That took a bit longer than I reckoned. Next time I’ll have to make it something a little easier to get through, like tapioca. As for punishment, that’s not my thing. I’m an old sorcerer. I work spells from old books. I live as I like and I do as I please, but never to punish people.  I find people tend to punish themselves pretty good without my assistance”

“Now what,” said the Old Man, who was no longer a King.

“Well, it’s up to you, really.  You’re about a thousand leagues from people in any direction.  There’s no food or water between here and there, and I can’t guarantee you won’t come across an occasional beasty or two. They might be real and they might be figments of your imagination but either way they’ll be deadly. Or you can sit here for eternity and ponder all the things you’ve seen and had and lost. Either way, you have found your destiny.”

The Old Man sat down on a nearby rock and when he looked up the Knobby Little Man had vanished.

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c. 2011 david elzey

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What is the New Grimmoire? A general explanation lies here.

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superior, or arrogant?

I wasn’t originally planning to weigh in on this whole “Chinese Mothers Are Superior” thing because I felt like everyone had already put a dog into the fight.  I’m not a mother, I’m not Chinese, and I am equally appalled by the various ways I’ve seen parents raise their children, so I wasn’t really sure I wanted to wade into this, but I’m still thinking about some personal experiences that won’t let it rest.

During my first two years of college I encountered kids who were raised by Chinese parents the way that Amy Chua raises her kids. My first roommate spent his every waking moment outside of class studying and half way through the semester, when he learned that he would not be able to pull straight A’s in all his classes, he disappeared.  One day he was there on the other side of the room, the next all that was left was the dorm furniture and a pencil.  I asked around and learned he had dropped out of school, and about a month later someone said they saw him selling cars in downtown Oakland. His was the happiest story.

In the spring a girl who had similarly been nose-down working for nothing but straight A’s didn’t do so well in one class, packed her things and shipped them home.  She never made it home.  Her parents called because they received the shipped personal items but the girl never made it home. Her roommate said that the night before she disappeared all she talked about was the shame she was bringing upon her family. We didn’t understand it at the time.

My second year of college a third kid disappeared, and this was our window into what was happening. A kid down the hall had become increasingly agitated about his grade performance and would keep his roommate up late at night cursing. Apparently he was verging on dropping below an A- and even the A- was causing him stress.  His roommate asked him why he was beating himself up and the kid explained that this was how he was raised. His parents, his mother especially, pushed him and his siblings to excel and would accept nothing less. They made it very clear that anything less than perfection was not an option, and would disown him if he failed to meet their expectations. His roommate thought it was harsh, and thought he might have been exaggerating a little, but wasn’t laughing a week later when the kid disappeared.

Campus police investigated, a letter was found, and a cursory search was made in the waters around the Golden Gate Bridge where the kid’s note said he was planning to jump from. When the dorm managers asked the family what they wanted done with their son’s personal belongings they were told “We have no son.” It was never clear to us whether they were more ashamed by the suicide or the grade failure.

Years later when I was a public school teacher I encountered some of these parents. During parent-teacher conferences and back-to-school nights they would make their expectations very clear to me, and it was generally the mothers who were the most concerned about their children’s grades. As Chua points out it wasn’t always Chinese parents, and it got so that when you met a student you knew which ones had the strict parents at home.  They weren’t as social, kept to themselves, never attended any school activities. They would occasionally check in to see if there was extra credit work they could do, some even saying their mothers told them expressly to ask for extra work. Other kids would tell us stories about Chinese school where kids would spend several hours after their public school day, and weekends, translating their American schoolwork into Chinese.

And all this for what?

Do the ends justify the means?

I saw three kids pushed to the brink, where anything less than perfection was failure, and I find the argument that this is superior parenting arrogant . Yes, on their own, kids will be lazy, and in that weird way that kids are they do crave to be pushed. Yes, parents can and should want their children to excel and succeed and be the best people they can possibly grow up to be. But a world without unstructured play, without instrument beyond piano and violin, without choice in extracurricular activities sounds far from superior to me.

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hit lists

A recent post of mine had a WordPress-recommended “along the same lines” link that brought me back to a post I did last March about all the things I was tired of seeing in books I was reading.  Then a couple of days ago on Twitter I caught a link to an article from the recent SCBWI Bulletin that was an update of an earlier list on the most over-used things in middle grade and YA.

While Joelle Anthony’s list has many things I agree with, I think the differences in our lists might represent the books we read.  Clearly I don’t read as many books with girls as main characters, and I suspect my list leans more toward middle grade (a heavy influence in the year leading up to that post) where I suspect her list leans more toward YA.

Also, where Joelle is clear about saying that her list is not to be taken as a “never” list, I think I might still be leaning toward the “stop, now, please” end of the spectrum.

Joelle Anthony’s The NEW Red-Haired Best Friend article.

My post In Moratorium.

I think I will add one thing that isn’t on either list that has to do with the vogue of calling everything written in three lines with a meter of five syllables/seven syllables/five syllables haiku. This would be akin to defining a limerick as five lines with an AABBA rhyme scheme without mentioning its rhythms or the usual “twist” ending.  The haiku isn’t simply about syllables, but about an observation made in two lines with a new awareness in the third (or vice versa); the haiku isn’t simply a sentence seventeen syllables that can be broken up, or a combination of sentences that are jammed into the structure.  Most often, the most egregious of these haiku violators are aimed at a boy audience with subjects like zombies and pirates and just plain ol’ boy activity, done with a wink that says “Hey, kid, poetry can be FUN!”  The problem is that it cheapens the haiku form, presents bad examples as good, and suggests that a reader doesn’t need to know the difference. All of that to say No more bad poetry fobbed off as haiku.

But don’t just take my word for it.  Read everything and judge for yourself, as I always say.

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when a “graphic novel” isn’t

I just finished a trio of “graphic novels” and they’ve put a tempest in my teapot again about the term. Despite their Library of Congress subject demarcation as graphic novels the phrase that would best describe these three books are comic book, comic adventure, picture book with pretensions.

[For those worried that I'm talking about Cybils-nominated titles, fear not.  But out of some weird desire not to be too negative I will not be listing the titles and authors here. If I do feel compelled to comment I'll do so in formal reviews at that other blog of mine.]

Yes, this is me once again railing about using “graphic novel” to describe books intended for children and young adults that, to my thinking, fail to earn that title. It has become a hip way to market certain titles with comic book elements that (presumably) elevates them from some lower level of contempt. I don’t know if publishers are consciously aware of this, are parading their ignorance, or simply trying to gild a turd for revenue, but it irks me something fierce when I see inferior quality books heralded by reviewers because they cannot be bothered to see that the emperor is naked.

Just to be clear, what I expect from a graphic novel aimed at children and young adults are the same things I expect from fiction, movies, and any other art that falls under the general category of storytelling. I don’t believe that simply stringing out a weak picture book plot over twice as many pages with five times the number of illustrations is a substitution for quality.  I don’t think that a mystery series that goes from point A to point B without an ounce of characterization makes it good just because it appeals to readers.  I don’t care how proficient the art is, if you wouldn’t publish the story as a fictive narrative then i see no reason to publish it without demanding the same sort of story revisions authors are asked to perform.

When I pick up a book that uses sequential storytelling as its genre here’s what I look for:

• A main character with a clearly delineated goal or conflict
• Secondary characters with their own, occasionally conflicting, objectives
• A resolution that provides either the main character or the reader with a sense of having gained something from the experience
• A reason why the story needed to be told in a graphic format

You might be surprised at how many “graphic novels” fail to provide many if not most of these points.

For many of the “graphic novels” intended for younger audiences there seems to be this notion that a punchline is good enough, which aligns them closer with a comic strip than a graphic novel.  Picture books can often get away with this punchline structure, and I would argue that many of the “graphic novels” that resemble comic strips could be boiled down to much better, funnier, picture books.  In some ways, the “graphic novel” becomes proof of flabby writing.

But often the question I’m left asking when I finish a “graphic novel” is: why did someone (or several someones, since publishers and editors are involved) feel this story needed to be told and published in this format?  The equivalent is sitting in the theatre after a movie wishing you could have not only your money but those lost two hours of your life back.  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve felt this way with “graphic novels” from large publishing houses.

I think moving forward I’m going to attempt to identify “graphic novels” according to the criteria above in my reviews and see if it holds up. It may turn out that I’ll come across a book that fails on most counts but is still satisfying.  I can’t think of one off the top of my head – perhaps you can – but maybe by this time next year I’ll have identified a trend or adopt some other set of criteria that works better.

As it stands, here’s hoping for better graphic novels and fewer “graphic novels” in children’s literature in 2011.

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