And No, I Don’t Mean The Bookshops…..
Say the word “border” and what springs to mind are generally those places inhabited by uniformed officals who have the power to and often enjoy making your life briefly miserable.
But then again, it seems our entire existences are tied up in borders.
Our skin is the border between us and the rest of the world. The sun on your face, waves and sand around your ankles, the touch of the wind, all places where borders meet borders. Touch a stone, dip your hand in a stream, all our sensations are defined by this willing touching of frontiers.
We refer to borders all the time. Tell a child he doesn’t NEED something, you are asking him to define the border between his desires and his needs. Growing up means defining your own borders – where you stop and others begin.
To touch the skin of another person is perhaps the the most intense defining of borders available to us, whether it is a blow or a caress.
Other borders: pencils on paper. Brushes and colour. All these things touching and defining each other by contact. Definined by the places we touch reality, outlining the places we touch imagination.
Do we ever really cross any of these borders? I really wonder.
Everything my eyes see is borders. Light is invisible unless it is touching something, defining a border between one thing and the next.
It seems the only borders I really cross are the ones where I get hassled and my luggage searched. All the other borders of my mind, body and spirit are like windows from which I look, my nose pressed to the glass, or railings over which I lean, giddy with vertigo, holding tight in case I lose my balance.
Actually, just talking to people for me is like standing on the edge of a cliff or walking on water. There is SO much – well, a whole life – contained in every person’s eyes, their voice, their gestures. If I close my eyes, I’d topple into space or sink and drown.
(That’s why I hide behind my beard and glasses. In such perilous territory, you need all the cover you can find.)
Admittedly, the bookshops are fine places too, but I spend far too much time and money in them…
TZON XAOY
I love surprises, and certainly got one during the signature session at the Fellowship Festival. A very nice gentleman turned up with a book entitled “The Magic of Myth”, with a strangely familiar cover…
Turns out it’s the Greek edition of Myth & Magic, which I didn’t even know existed (or I ‘d have looked a bit harder this summer).
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Photos © Socrates 2004
I checked out the editor’s web site, but it’s all Greek to me…
“FRONT PICTURE BY JOHN HOUT”
Did indeed reach the record company that edited that Russian band (the ones who are musicians, so they write music). The full story is here
DRAGONS
There might well be a calendar next fall in the US for 2006. Right now it’s e-mail exchanges, rushing about, choosing pictures, writing captions, approving layouts and generally hoping it will come out well.
More as I have something to show for it.
DRAWING ATTENTION
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Left: One of the conferences at the Fellowship Festival. These are really enromous fun. And besides, with two illustrators for the price of one, it’s honestly quite a bargain. I believe Alan is staring on in mild dismay while I try to throttle (at a distance, à la Darth Vader) the unfortunate soul who has asked for the three hundred thousandth time “Who’s your favourite character from the books?”.
Photo © Socrates
Right: Or how to draw attention at a party. Alan and I busily scribbing away at little drawings for the organiser. But Alan’s attention seems to have wandered. The rest of the photos are here.
Photo © Leo/TheOneRing.net
NATURAL
Just an aside, in the category truth can indeed be stranger than fiction; there is a big national referendum coming up in Switzerland which has given rise to much heated debate.
The question is, should THIRD-generation immigrants be accorded Swiss nationality automatically at birth, or should they still be required to demand naturalization*.
Boy, the temerity of Swiss debate never ceases to amaze me. I mean where is this country headed if kids whose GRAND-PARENTS immigrated are just given the nationality at birth? How will they appreciate their good fortune if it is not graciously bestowed at their specific request? Talk about rapidly evolving politics. Add to that a parliamentary committee that recently concluded that there MAY be a relationship between the number of children and government social policy, and that couples MAY indeed think twice about a second or third child for financial reasons.
But then, why be surprised, the other hot debate is whether or not new mothers should have paid maternity leave. (In Finland, just as an example, they only have 42 weeks at 100% salary or 52 at 80%. Most northern European nations allow 3 or 4 months.) There are billboards with slogans like: “Maternity leave: NO to State-sponsored babies!”
So perhaps it’s not surprising that one person out of seven in this land is a foreigner and that natality is in decline – except all those third-generation foreign babies, of course…
Switzerland may be a very civilized nation, but there are areas where there is a long walk ahead… but then the Swiss do seem to like long hikes.
* “Naturalization” by the way, according to the dictionary, is a “procedure designed to give a dead creature a life-like appearance, the art of the taxidermist”…
But speaking of kids…
Went to a concert of traditional Irish music (Elandir) two nights ago, to accompany my son there and drive him back home. Standing in the back of the crowd, watching his head and shoulders bobbing up and down in the front row, it occured to me how very fortunate I am.
Isn’t that why we have kids, to take us somewhere new?
First they take us to parenthood and those long sleepless nights, then little by little out into a world not quite our own.
Of course they don’t take you back to your own childhood (that world is not anywhere but in your head), but they teach you not to live vicariously through them. They teach you to respect them and thus yourself, and that those closest to you are not your property but just sharing footsteps for a while. That the little bits of you that you recognize in them are like reflections in the water. Precious while they last, but you can’t cup them in your hands.
So, I’m looking forward to wherever else he’ll let me tag along.
It’ll certainly be somewhere I’ve never been.
