Peg Kerr's Journal

I bought Greyson Chance's new album. And I'm enjoying it.

I had to. There's a song on it called "Heart of Stone." And it's really pretty good.

Delia likes him, too (she scorns Justin Bieber).

The girls are back home (yay!), and we're back from Minicon weekend.

Rob has been quite busy all week with this temporary census job. It has prevented him from putting any work in on the room rearrangement project--and since it's to a large extent his stuff that's the bottleneck, I was stymied from doing it myself. But we got started finally on Friday morning. Two bookcases and a dresser have been moved so far, so we're partway there. My computer is still in the room that's going to be Fiona's bedroom, at least until we figure out wiring. Rob may resort to running cables rather than depending on a wireless card. Not sure. We'll see. I hope we'll be able to work on it during the coming week, although I think he has more census work in the way.

The two of us headed to Minicon on Friday afternoon. (Didn't stay at the hotel this time, but drove home in the evenings.) The con is quite small now, just about 400 people now (quite a change from the days when 3000 used to show up). I did no programing this year, and mostly just sat around and talked with people. That was nice.

The girls got back late Saturday afternoon and came straight to the hotel. They had a marvelous time. Delia ran quickly through her pictures on the digital camera, showing me the people and scenes from the past week. They were rather tired, and Fiona's fighting a cold. We didn't stay late Saturday, and we left right after the con was finished today.

I indulged in one thing in the dealer's room, the Heart of Faerie Oracle Deck by Brian and Wendy Froud. It's been my tradition to do a tarot reading on Easter Sunday, when Minicon was over. Laurel Winter did them for me for years, but since she's stopped coming to Minicon, I've started doing them myself. I had thought it was a tarot deck, but it turns out it was a different animal, an oracle deck. It's truly a lovely thing. I took it home and studied it and tried to do a reading, asking What do I need to know about turning fifty. I was quite impressed. I have two other decks, but I have a truly powerful affinity for this one, and I think it will become quite a favorite. The backs of the cards look like this:




How perfect, with their hearts (heart of flesh/heart of stone, natch), and the roots, which make me think of trees (esp. the Holy Tree) and the spark at the middle (Light in Dark Places). The wings don't make me think of swans so much as ravens, but that's okay, too. (You can see other cards from this deck pictured in the slideshow at the bottom of this review.)

So: the girls are safe and well and home, the con was subdued, but quite pleasant, and I have a beautiful new deck. Life is good.

Long time readers of my journal know that I've written extensively about the issue of choosing the heart of flesh vs. the heart of stone. This was one of the cards I'd specifically intended to make when I left for the retreat. I had searched for specific images to use for it and had them all printed out and ready. On a walk the second day I was there, while I was mulling over this theme (it turned out to be the theme for the entire retreat) I happened to glance down at my feet and I discovered this (click any picture twice to see it close up):





So as soon as I finished my walk, I went in and made this card:

Heart of Flesh vs. Heart of Stone - Council Suit I am the One who offers you the choice between being fully human, able to feel pain as well as joy, and being remote, perhaps more powerful and untroubled, but absolutely untouched by human emotion. Choose carefully

Every soul collage deck should enclose a Source card, the One from which everything springs. You may interpret it as God or the Big Bang or the heart of a flower, or what you will. Fiona insouciantly noted that the sillouette looks like a fat cat tipped over on its side.

( Source )

( Birth )

( The Gardener )

( Serene Heart Center )

( The Frozen Wasteland Within )

I have been thinking rather obsessively about this the last three days.

Longtime readers of this Livejournal know that I sometimes ruminate here about what I should be when I grow up. Which is both rather funny and sad, since I'm going to be 49 on my next birthday. I thought for many years that what I wanted to be was a writer, which (I assumed) meant a writer of original, professionally published fiction. Well, I've done that, and done it well, if I do say so myself, but the creative part of my brain hasn't been cooperating enough to allow me to do that for awhile. This caused me great pain for a long time (see my entries tagged "writers block"--there are a LOT of them.) I think I finally figured out the reason why the original fiction intended for professional publication stopped--although, who knows, in five years I may surprise myself and get back to it. Not holding my breath, though. I started to realize that the larger question is, what is my vocation? My life's work, if you will (and yes, I realize that doesn't necessarily mean it's what I do to earn my living). I've wrestled with that question in this LJ, too, particularly here and here.

A lot of thoughts have come together in my mind about this the last few days. Some conversations with kijjohnson who is wrestling with her own questions, now that she has been laid off. Going back to see my therapist, after several years away. He is the one who gave me the assignment to figure out what I do well. On that one, I just was lazy and asked you (and was genuinely startled and touched at all the heartwarming answers--thank you!) One of the things I discussed with my therapist at that meeting was how my thinking about writing fic for publication has been evolving and, in perhaps a related way, how my thinking about my day job has been evolving, too. Part of it is simple gratitude that I have a day job (with health insurance!) at all, since Rob has been laid off. But more than that, I started applying some of the reading I've been doing about vocation at work. I read about a woman who scrubbed floors at hospitals, and when asked what she did for a living, she said she helped the sick. I read about a creative man who was the manager at an art framing store who was happy with his work, because he said his job was to help people display their own creative endeavors. I read about a man who worked for a moving company who said that his vocation was to decrease the stress for families when they moved. If you think about it that way . . . how do I serve a vocation by working as a legal secretary? If you look at it that way, it's not so much that I type insurance paperwork, it's that I assist six attorneys by decreasing their stress, helping them accomplish their projects. At the time I was thinking about all this, one of the people I worked for suddenly underwent some serious upheaval in his life, and he really needed me to decrease his stress in a way that he's seldom needed before. I suddenly saw that I was assisting him that way, and once I realized that . . . well, it felt pretty good.

And then there's the thinking I've been doing in the last year watching several projects: Obama's election, and particularly watching how the Transition team is implementing things at http://change.gov. Getting involved as a microlender with Kiva.org. Taking a look at Google's Project 10^100 contest (see an explanation here). Project 4 Awesome, by the Vlogbrothers (the Brotherhood 2.0 guys, John and Hank Green, the originators of the Nerdfighters).

It's all interconnected, I've suddenly been thinking in the past three days. John and Hank Green, the ones who pointed me to Kiva.org, have put it into words as: "We want to Decrease World Suck." ("We're Nerdfighters We fight against suck....we fight awesome...We fight using our brains, our hearts, our calculators and our trombones.") The genius of this as a vocation is that it's so flexible. That's why John and Hank have turned it over to the Nerdfighters, and said, okay, run with it! What can you do to decrease worldsuck? It's exactly the same thing that Andrew Slack is doing over at The Harry Potter Alliance. It's why Obama set his organization up as a grassroots movement, modeled on, well, community organizing, trusting people to see the work and carry it forward, from the ground up. It's why people have been responding to the election by saying, what can I do now, to help get our country back on its feet? It's what Wellstone was trying to do, and it's what the Wellstone Action is trying to carry forward. It's what the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater is trying to do, and Playing for Change. It's Teach for America, and the Peace Corps, and Bread for the World, and the Search Institute, and Hippo Water Rollers and the Life Straw, and so much else. It's St. Martins Table and projects to create and distribute solar cookers in Africa. It's the guy who wrote Three Cups of Tea, who's building schools for girls in Afghanistan. It's paying it forward. It's keeping a heart of flesh in a world that tries to put in its place a heart of stone. It's raising kids and cleaning up the environment and making the world a better place.

Tell me what you are doing personally (or an organization that you like that works) to decrease world suck.

Edited to add: Apparently, the Nerdfighters are a subgroup over at Kiva. I've joined the group. I've also joined the Decrease Worldsuck Foundation over at Facebook.

This coming Saturday, April 19, I will be reading my paper that was presented at the Fantasy Matters conference on the Heart of Flesh/Heart of Stone at the monthly meeting of the Rivendell Group of the Mythopoeic Society, and you are all invited to attend. One of the main books I discuss in the paper, Sunshine by Robin McKinley, is also a topic at this meeting.

Here are two stories on the web which I suggest that people read on the topic "Heart of Flesh, Heart of Stone." The first one I discuss in my paper. Both are quite short:
"The Girl With the Heart of Stone" and mrissa's story "Water, Flesh and Stone." (You might also take a look at the essay I did for snapecast on the topic, concerning Severus Snape, here).

The meeting will be held at 1:30 PM at the Southeast Community Library,
1222 4th St SE in Dinkytown near the Minneapolis U of MN east bank campus.

Here's the bibliography for the paper:

Anderson, Hans Christian. "The Snow Queen." Tr. Neil Philip. London: Reader's Digest Association Limited, 2004.

The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1976.

Bobet, Leah. "The Girl with the Heart of Stone." Strange Horizons. Ed. Susan Marie Groppi. 12 Nov. 2007. <http://www.strangehorizons.com/2006/20060109/heart-f.shtml>.

Bull, Emma. "Why I Write Fantasy." Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine. Ed. Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Eugene, Oregon: Pulphouse Publishing, 1990. 14-22

Byatt, A.S. "Ice, Snow, Glass." Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: Women Writers Explore their Favorite Fairy Tales. Ed. Kate Bernheimer. New York: Anchor Books, 1998. 60-79.

Dickens, Charles. Nicholas Nickleby. New York: Penguin Books, 1999.

Hughart, Barry. Bridge of Birds. New York: Ballantine Books, 1984.

McKinley, Robin. "The Stone Fey." Imaginary Lands. Ed. Robin McKinley. New York: Ace Fantasy, 1985.

---. Sunshine. New York: Jove Books, 2003.


Hope to see you there.

We came, we saw, we kicked butt!

Delia passed the double black stripe belt test this morning. I did not attend, but Rob was there and took pictures. Hopefully I will be able to download and post some of them tomorrow. She was actually not feeling particularly well, but Rob said that she pulled herself together and had a good test.

We also got the word that Fiona passed the third pre-test screening.

Fiona is testing for Black Belt on December 1.

The test will take place at 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and yes, you are invited. This is the black belt exam which is held quarterly for all the National Karate schools citywide, and it is quite interesting to watch. I will post more information about the exact location later, but again, you are invited to come watch. The whole test takes (I think) about two hours.

As for me, I had two appearances today at the Fantasy Matters conference. The first was the panel on The Wild Swans, held at 8:30 a.m. I read two sections of the novel, one from each storyline. David Lenander suggested the sections, and although I hadn't done those ones at readings before, I thought they were well matched and both suitably dramatic. The first was Elias' second visit to the baths, when he was looking for Sean, and then the scene at Central Park where Sean tells Elias he has AIDS. The second was the scene where William and Jonathan follow Eliza to the graveyard, followed by the scene where she is arrested. The advantage to reading the scenes together was that (hopefully) the juxtaposition made it clear to the listeners that the language describing the men at the baths was exactly the same as the language describing the ghosts in the graveyard. That reading took twenty minutes. It was actually an excellent suggestion on David's part; I think I'd chose those two selections for future readings (if I have many other occasions to do readings from Swans, which probably won't happen, actually. The book is getting harder and harder to obtain, although it isn't quite out of print yet). Then David talked for about a half hour about the novel, relating it to the tradition of fairy tale retellings in general and H.C. Andersen in particular. It was lightly attended, but given the panel time, I expected that.

What totally took me by surprise was the turn out at my presentation on the Heart of Flesh/Heart of Stone. My jaw literally dropped as more and more people came into the room. I thought it would be empty because of the panel opposite on Stardust, but I guess they might have ended it early. Anyway, maybe thirty-five people or so showed up, which was a good turnout. I cut one section of the paper on the fly, but that turned out to be a good decision, because it was really just a secondary example of the point I made in the previous section, and that way, the paper came in at exactly the right amount. NOBODY THREW TOMATOES. On the contrary, there were a gratifying number of thoughtful questions and gracious compliments afterwards. It went much better than I ever expected it would.

Hurrah for all of us!

It is not coalescing at all. I didn't get anything coherent finished despite working on it all weekend, and I am just about in despair. I won't be going to any karate classes until I get it done, which is just making me crankier.

I keep forcibly telling myself that it is unlikely that the audience will throw tomatoes.

This is undoubtedly true, but helps only a little bit.

My paper proposal is here. I was just winging it when I drafted it, and I have one question: What works, specifically, of Robin McKinley's deal with the heart of flesh vs. heart of stone theme? I mentioned her in the abstract; I should put her work in the paper. What, specifically? Thanks.

Peg

(This is 227 words; the maximum is 250):

Flesh, Stone, or Missing Altogether:
The Heart as Embodiment of Humanity in Fantasy Literature

O had I known at early morn Tomlin would from me gone
I would have taken out his heart of flesh,
Put in a heart of stone

In the Author's Afterward to her fantasy novel, Tam Lin, Pamela Dean suggests that the book was about keeping a heart of flesh in a world that wants to put in a heart of stone, and how learning and literature can help their adherents accomplish that. The idea of a heart of flesh versus a heart of stone is a trope that has been used throughout the history of literature, a powerful metaphor which captures something essential about the experience of being engaged with the world, curious, creative, compassionate, vulnerable--in short, being human.

This paper will examine three metaphorical "states of the heart" (flesh, stone, or missing altogether) and explore why fantasy literature in particular is adept in exploring the different ranges of human experience suggested by this flexible metaphor. Examples from the work of Hans Christian Andersen ("The Snow Queen"), Barry Hughart (The Bridge of Birds) and Robin McKinley, among others, will be used to touch upon two advantages particular to the fantasy genre: 1) the illustrative contrast offered by the presence of non-human characters, and 2) the dramatic possibilities inherent in making the metaphor literal.

>>>

Or something. Help me make it pretty? Your comments are very welcome.

but I have to recommend this. Short, but entirely worth it. It's all about the heart of flesh vs. the heart of stone. And the title is from Dickens, which warms me to it even more. I'll be friending this person on strength of this fic alone.

The Hero of His Own Life by cesario. A condensed biography of Albus Dumbledore, and a wonderful character study.

Thanks to thistlerose for the pointer.