Climbing the Third Stair

My current bathtub reading is a grimoire. I think this says something about me, but I am not sure exactly what.

I picked up the Dover reprint of this book, which is a compilation and translation of a number of manuscript scrolls purporting to be a book of magic written by King Solomon. I think this alleged authorship can be easily called into question by the fact that the intro, which is supposed to be something Solomon wrote to his son Roboam, explains how the book was excavated from Solomon's tomb years and years after his death by a group of Babylonian Philosophers during a remodeling project at the tomb and who then figured out how to read it. I realize Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, but still.

The book is mainly concerned with how to conjure demons and spirits and oblige them to do stuff for you, and it goes into sometimes maddening detail in how to prepare oneself, one's companions, the circles, the medals or pentacles, the candle, incense, pens, inks, water, salt, etc, etc.

I say "sometimes" because in the third chapter of the second book it states, "And if he [the Magus] cannot have Companions, he should at least have with him a faithful and attached dog." The purpose of the dog is nowhere explained. The (human) Companions' role is explained much earlier in the book: they help cart stuff into the circle and then stand around looking calm and impressive while the conjuration is going on. So what does the dog do? Solomon is clearly serious about the dog, as he even provides a Conjuration to be said over the dog while bathing and perfuming it with incense. It's baffling.

I picked this up to serve as a reference work for writing, and I think it will serve nicely, both in its own contents and as a model for fictional girmoires. In the meantime it's amused me over the course of several baths, which makes it worth the cost right there.

I've been cleaning my desk at work for the past week (don't ask) and the most amazing stuff has floated back up. My John Belushi "Samurai Baker" action figure, an embarrassing number of deli tabs that I need to pay off, floppy disks with cryptic phrases written on them (my current work computer doesn't even accept floppies!).... I've also encountered a number of quotes that over the years I have scribbled, printed, and sometimes even laminated and taped to the wall of the bakery for a time. ( Warning: contains quote and writer lust. )

In junior high I discovered one of my favoritest books in the world: The Guns of Naverone by Alistair MacLean. We met by pure accident--I had actually been looking for Force 10 From Navarone, because the movie version had just come out starring Harrison Ford and, well, Harrison Ford. My jr high library didn't have Force 10, but it did have Guns, so I checked it out instead. (I never did manage to see the movie of Force 10, and I don't even know which character Ford played. But if I was casting a remake of Guns, I would put him as the tough, slightly world-weary Mallory. Type casting? Maybe. But it is such a good type for him!)

Having gotten the book I settled down to read. At the time I knew very little about WWII and nothing on the finer (or even large scale!) points of naval warfare, so the exact reason why Navarone was so important didn't quite take with me. It didn't matter. From the first page I was utterly absorbed, and no sooner had I finished it than I turned back to the first page and started over. I read it three or four times before I had to give it back to the library, and then I checked it out a few more times after that. (Eventually I got a copy of my own, along with a lot of other MacLean books--my love of used book stores flowered early in life.)

It's difficult for me to say exactly what I found so gripping about it--I haven't reread it since I started writing seriously, so I've never read it with my writer-brain engaged. The fact that it has a first-class roller coaster of a plot probably helps. (Unlike, say, Where Eagles Dare, whose denoument makes me want to throw it with great force. yhlee, do not, under any circumstances, read that book. There are not enough sporks in the world for it.) And there is also that Guns presented a world that I somehow hadn't noticed before, a world where people made decisions that mattered and lived and died by inches and errors and ideals.

But over all this, when I sift through my memories, what impresses me most is the amazingly textured gorgeousness of MacLean's writing. A sun-washed dock in the Mediterranean, with the wild hills of a Greek island in the background; the cellar of an ancient manor house; the smokey insides of an island taverna; all of it is rendered in a loving detail that would give Tolkein a run for his money. People don't just drink wine, they drink hock or Moselle or retsina and they don't eat food, they eat olives and figs and bread, and when they stop to smoke you hear the flare of the match and see how the fire makes their face more visible in the darkness as they light the cigarette.

Somewhere in the maze of boxes that is my apartment is my copy of this book. If that isn't an incentive to finish unpacking I don't know what is.

This afternoon I finished the Main Business of the weekend, which was the be-flavoring of Honor's Veil, and decided that I then had to do housework. One of the many things I got done was to clean off all the stuff on my bed so I could put down clean sheets.

Now, understand that I have a queen-sized bed (courtesy of my dad, who found it at a moving sale and hauled it down to Lincoln in his pick-up truck) and that as I am the kind of person who falls asleep in one place and more-or-less stays there, so that a lot of my bed gets used for non-sleeping purposes. Like holding clean clothes that need to be hung up. Or the book I was reading before I turned off the light and went to sleep.

This afternoon I found the following items in my bed:
Three catalogs (American Science & Surplus, Dharma Trading Co., Herrschners Crafts)
The Book of the Courtier, Baldesar Castiglione
Japanese Destroyer Captain, Capt. Tameichi Hara
Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind's Eye, Alan Dean Foster
Rurouni Kenshin vol. 27
Bleach vol 16, 17, 20
War Prince (Star Commandos #12), P. M. Griffin
The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations, by J.K. Hoyt (published 1907)
Sink the Bismark!, C. S. Forester
Two pamphlets on the rosary
A print-out of an L5R fanfic by koshindou

Renaissance woman or a deeply confused individual? You be the judge.