THAT DAY

I'm reading a short story collection by Howard Waldrop: "Night Of The Cooters." It's like wandering through a flea market on bad mushrooms. True, they're not exactly stories, just obsessive, feverish concoctions of weird images and obscure facts. My favorite tale is "Fin de Cyclé" [not a typo: it's about dadaism and bicycles], but all of them are fascinating--and fun.

I'm glad that Howard writes. If he didn't, I'm afraid he'd be a dangerous collector--the kind who'll kill for a rare whatsit.

As his fellow writer George R.R. Martin says, "Howard really can't plan a story worth shit, but who cares?"

Well, I care. Because if Waldrop can get people to pay for work this obsessive, this crazy, writing as wiggly as worms... then anything goes.

Even my dreamtales.

Even those.

THAT NIGHT

I find myself in Middle Earth, in rural Gondor, with some of the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf, Pippin, Gimli, and maybe others. We're on horseback, in warm spring meadows, with the White Mountains sheltering us from the storms to the north.

Someone asks about a spiritual phenomenon called Summoning. Gandalf knows best, of course, but the dwarf Gimli answers for him, "for we mustn't bother Gandalf now: he needs time to think, and his visionary strategy is more important than these immediate details."

So the the questioner turns to Pippin and Gimli, asking "What was it like, being Summoned?" The Dwarves and the questioner's people both have this concept; the hobbits and I don't.

Gimli says "I knew right away..." but Pippin muses "I was just determined to come along with my friend Frodo. I still don't know what this Summoning is, just that everyone sees me with Gandalf and Gimli and takes their word for it that I was Summoned. I guess if your people don't believe in great spiritual powers or fancy destinies, you don't feel them either."

Gandalf breaks in briefly "Quite true. Some hobbits won't look beyond their bellies. But Middle Earth goes on for some yards beyond. You were Summoned, and there are Beings that Summon for a purpose, Pippin!" and returns to his meditation.

Pippin says quietly "The strange thing is, until recently, I'd never thought about Gandalf--who he really is. I grew up with him popping in and out; he was a fixture in my world. But where did he come from? How old is Gandalf? Is he... a Summoner himself? Or Summoned?"

I'd never thought of it that way. What if you grow up so close to an angel that you take him for granted?

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Waldrop and Tolkien: Waldrop's intro said "Modern fantasy is boring. Magic is boring. All derived from Tolkien." Howard gets his kicks from reality--skewed, but rendered in surreal, mad, loving detail. So my dream-hobbits echo Waldrop's anti-Tolkienism: they're skeptical of magic, religion, power, heroism. Practical types who'd never admit to a spiritual calling. A nation of half-pint Waldrops!
• So Pippin = the aggressive skepticism my scientific dad taught me. Waldroppian! And this blinds me. I may sense a true spiritual call only as a vague urge.
• Who is Gandalf? echoes a real scene in the book, where Pippin does suddenly realize Gandalf (who he's known all his life) is ancient, a mystery. A sudden leap from the least mature of the Fellowship.
• Over-skepticism can blind you: echoes an earlier dream, Hawking Country, or, My Quantum Life. I felt summoned by that dream to preach that dreams can tune in news on a quantum level--futures, pasts, other worlds, alternate universes. Magic may be 'boring,' but it's as real as radio.
• What AM I called to do? I'm in a career success team; recently they asked "What's your calling?" I found myself saying "I want to start a zine or site to teach shamanic dreaming--not all sappy & New Age or solemn and Jungian, but with the humor and practicality my dreams have." [2015 NOTE: next year my friend Zooop helped me post dream texts & art on the early Web--the first core of the World Dream Bank.]
• Gimli the Dwarf = Alfred Jarry in "Fin de Cyclé" = creative worker, a dreamer mining Jungian dream-caverns for gems.
• Gandalf = my Genius (in the Classical sense of guiding spirit). Today I had to tell others "I'm busy now, I'm working." New for me to value my own time and art.
• Summoning= a key idea in "Smith of Wootton Major", Tolkien's fable on creative vision. He says we don't just explore other realms--we're called, and for a purpose.
• Have I been called? My inner craftsman is quite clear I have a calling, even if my flippant day persona, my inner Waldrop, disbelieves in calling and its corollary: as Leonard Cohen put it in Who by Fire?, "And who / shall we say / is Calling?"

So if I've been summoned by some subtle angel, does that make this website religious propaganda? Sorry about that! And here I thought we were having fun, just rummaging through the bazaar of my brain... like Howard Waldrop.

I thought the Web was a safe, comfortable Shire of obsessives, collectors and monomaniacs--hobbits like me building our little junk-shop sites. Waldrops all! Waldrops all!

Oh well. Wrong again.

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