Back to the Source

I don't think I've ever worked so single-mindedly on one project in my life. I've been drawing for hours every day for the past month and a half. I've certainly discovered my limitations as an artist, but I see this as a chance to learn as I go.

Why this story, though?  The Arthurian legend goes back quite far in my life. I remember when I was five years old, a local television station ran The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, a half-hour adventure show from the UK, right after The Mickey Mouse Club. I'm sure I had no idea what was going on in the show, other than the fact that there were knights. (A bit of confusion then: I also watched The Adventures of Robin Hood, and I couldn't seem to get around the fact that in Sir Lancelot the good guys wore armor and in Robin Hood the bad guys did.) What really connected me with the Arthurian stories, though, was when I played in a high school production of Camelot. That may seem rather mundane, but for me it was a watershed. It was my first experience with theatre, and it was my first real connection with the actual story of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot. Obsessive that I am, I memorized the entire play and then read T.H. White's The Once and Future King, and then Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Four decades and many other books later, this legend is the taproot of who I am. My love of literature, history, myth, comparative religion, fantasy, theatre, storytelling, and Monty Python all revert back to the cycle of stories which revolve around this figure, the very nature of whose existence is murky at best. As I get further into this project, I look forward to portraying characters whom I've known for most of my life. In that respect, it's not unlike attending a high school reunion. (Truth be told, being the socially awkward nerd that I was, I know these characters better and have kept better contact with them than I have with my actual classmates.)

I suppose it's no surprise, then, that the first character we meet is my oldest friend. I have always been beguiled by Merlin (or Merlyn, as T.H. White spelled it, or Myrddyn in the Welsh as his name appears in Calogrenant). I'm certainly not the only one who feels this way. Merlin seems to have been second only to Arthur in general interest almost from the beginning. The 12th century Welsh cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth, who in his Historia Regum Britanniae (The History of British Kings) wrote the first full history of Arthur, also made a star of Arthur's mystical advisor. Geoffrey imported Merlin from a couple of generations later, and incorporated at least two if not three Celtic bards/seers/madmen into the character. Merlin was such a hit with readers that Geoffrey composed The Life of Merlin as a follow-up, and the mage has been an integral character in the Arthurian cycle ever since.

In the medieval stories, Merlin was dark and mysterious - a figure of awe - not that he isn't still. But T.H. White created a different Merlyn than Geoffrey's or Malory's. There was, I believe, much of White himself in his seer: a stodgy, cluttered academic who lives backward in time. His Merlyn was a guide for us into the middle ages, someone with our knowledge who has gone back to that age and observes with our eyes and attempts to bring to a violent age a sense of civilizing order. There is sad irony here, since during the writing of the books which comprise his Arthuriad, White lived through and was horrified by the bestiality of the Second World War. His book ends with Merlyn long gone and Arthur's idealistic experiment in ruins, at war with his best friend. What, I wonder, would Merlyn (or White) think of our world today, in which ideologues, devoid of their idealism, do their damnedest to destroy each other without bothering to discover who, exactly each other are. But to come back from the tangent, Myrddyn in my comic owes much to T.H. White, but just as much to J.R.R. Tolkien, Dr. Who, three quarters of my professors from college, and just about every presenter of B.B.C. documentary series, from Kenneth Clarke to the present. He's becoming in my mind an amalgam of just about everyone I've ever really wanted to have lunch with.

Speaking of the B.B.C., here's a link to one of the best reasons for state-sponsored media I've ever come across. My discovery of In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg is one of the true perks of having the Internet. Once a week, he sits down with a few academics and discusses... whatever. This past week it was Hadrian's Wall. The week before that it was skepticism.  Forty-odd minutes a week of unashamed and glorious pedantry! So here's a discussion of Merlin from a few years ago. Enjoy.

Calogrenant Begins

Calogrenant begins with two pages, starting next week there will be only one page per week. Simply click on the images to enlarge.

A few notes:

First I would like to thank Dr. Helen Nicholson of Cardiff University, whose excerpt from the Arthurian romance Claris et Laris served as the inspiration for this web comic. I'm pleased to say that I have Dr. Nicholson's blessing for this endeavor, and I'm very happy to have made a friend. As long as I'm thanking people, I'd also like to thank Rob Seutter, aka True Thomas, who has frequently asked my services (on the promise of numerous steak dinners) for posters for the Society of Creative Anachronisms, thus inculcating in me the delusion that I can actually draw. And I'd further like to thank Henry Mayo for his inspiration and support and for creating the Free Art School group in Facebook and Michael Gross who has been inspiring and mentoring me (unbeknownst to him) since 1972 and who recently told me a very simple but powerful truth: "You've got to draw every day." In truth I could fill several pages with the names of people who have supported and inspired me, so I will simply say, "Thank you one and all."

I hope you enjoy this story it's been rattling inside my brain, demanding to be told, and now we've made a start.

By the way, if the elderly gentleman's name seems to have been misspelled, it has not. Calogrenant is using the Welsh variant of his name. More about that in a few weeks.

Calogrenant

I'm back. And I've got an announcement. Starting Monday, July 16, Mythcongeniality will host a webcomic. It will be called "Calogrenant" and it's the story of one of King Arthur's knights who... No, I won't comment on it yet. Come back Monday and every Monday thereafter and follow Calogrenant's adventures. Being who I am, I'll also give a running commentary on each installment. I'm excited!!!

Facts and Truth and Fairytales and I'm Back

I'm going to try to make this blog a more regular part of my life and not just an annual post. That being said, I don't know how fitting it is that I start up again by cannibalizing FaceBook. I posted a link to NPR yesterday featuring an interview with Professor Bart Ehrman regarding his book on the existence of a historical Jesus.It started a flurry of comments from friends who were both believers and non-believers. All of it struck a chord for me which resulted in the following:


Joseph Campbell once described the soul reaching Nirvana as a moth finally achieving the flame: an instant of enlightenment and the oblivion. But eternity is in the instant. After 59 years and 11 months, I can't presume to know any more about the existence or non-existence of a deity than I did coming in. But as a storyteller, I know that I can't discount scripture, myth, and folktale. When a woman came to Albert Einstein asking how to motivate her sons to become scientists, he said, "Read them fairytales." Our problem lies in that we expect literality and historicity. When the first cosmonaut went into space, he reported that he saw no angels. I was quite young when I heard that and saw this more as a snide joke than a revelation. Expecting to see angels in space is as literal and misses the point as much as Huck Finn praying for fishhooks. But humans do that. Jeshua ben Joseph says, "When you pray, pray like this," and for 2000 years we dutifully try to repeat His exact words, rather than try to understand the transcendent meaning of those words. Humans bicker over the exact location of the Garden of Eden, ignoring that the Garden of Eden is a state of mind. And a woman who is every adolescent who ever lived gives in to a temptation based both in the desire for immortality and a good dose of horniness and gets blamed for the fact that life sucks and then you die AND becomes the central reason Paul gives for the need of human redemption.

If I'm agnostic, it's not because I choose to be. I would like very much for there to be a loving deity who actually cares about individual humans or that there be some kind of cosmic consciousness that humans, if they could only perceive it, are a part of. I must say that the closest I've come to touching ought of the transcendent was at a goddess ceremony at a Unitarian church in Pasadena a few years ago. As I approached the altar, I became very dizzy. That's about it, and I'm sure it could be given a psychological/physiological interpretation. But I won't discount it. Just a few minutes earlier, a lesbian Native American woman in attendance came up to me and said, "It's good to see another Two-Spirit here." It wasn't the first time I'd been called that, but it carried a little more weight under the circumstances. Wouldn't it be wonderful if more people saw people such as myself as holy women? There would be far fewer candles to light in November. I've been sorely tempted to put myself forward as a priestess of the Shekinah. But the fact is, I just don't know. It is that same fact, however, that keeps me from being atheist. That also posits a knowledge that is denied to me. I do not and cannot know that there is no cosmic consciousness. Neither Richard Dawkins nor Thomas Merton were given the absolute inside track. (Though Merton is in a better position now to know or to be nonexistent.)

I've got my Bibles, my Zen and Hindu books, and my books of folktales and fairytales a bunched together. As I said earlier, I don't discount fairytales. These were stories passed down from one generation to the next both as entertainment and insight. One does not have to literally believe in trolls or phoukas to get the truth from these tales. (A story doesn't have to be factual to be true; truth is something derived from a tale. And I DO believe in witches, though. I've socialized with several.) It is a mistake, also, to conflate mythology with falsehood. Myths are attempts to assign human meaning to existence and thus to understand higher truths. Thus Joseph Campbell, who stated to Bill Moyer that he didn't believe in a personal god, dedicated his life to unravelling the truths to be had in these stories.

I was quite interested in this interview. Many people have undertaken the task of proving the non-existence of Jesus the man. According the Aristotle, it is virtually impossible to prove the nonexistence of anything. General Lew Wallace decided in the late 19th century to disprove the divinity of Christ and ended up converting himself and, instead of writing the atheistic book he'd intended, wrote "Ben Hur," a straight-forward Christian novel. I use Lew Wallace when I talk to my students about research. The job of the researcher is to find out the facts - not to prove the veracity of their hypothesis, but to DISCOVER whether or not it is true. (Tough word.) Professor Ehrman has found a good deal of evidence that allows him to say that Jesus did, indeed, exist. Is Professor Ehrman a practicing Christian? No. He's an agnostic. But isn't it interesting that he adheres to the teachings of the Rabbi Jeshua ben Joseph? I think one can be a non-believer and still get a great deal of good from any system of faith. What bothers me most about ardent atheists is that they, like ardent believers, miss the Truth.

Regret

I had meant to post these thoughts some time ago, but they've not congealed until today when I read today's column by Christopher Goffard in the Los Angeles Times.

About a year and a half ago I put up a post that was critical of Christine Daniels' having taken down her blog at the Los Angeles Times and, without comment or explanation, having resumed writing as Michael Penner. I was very rightly criticized and corrected for this posting. My intention had not been to criticize this very personal choice but the fact that the reportage of it had not been brought to closure. Last November, the person in whom both these identities dwelt committed suicide. The pettiness of my criticism stood before me in full relief.

It is hard enough for anyone to transition. The potential losses can be devastating, not to mention the fact that one stands open to ridicule and unmitigated hatred. No matter how many statutes are passed, the idiot mind of the mass is slow to change, and prejudice has a nuclear half-life. Friends and family turn away or become monstrous. Add to this mixture the fact that someone transitioning from male to female is now held to a brutally unfair standard of beauty. Transition is tough enough in an average setting - how much more difficult if one is already, to a greater or lesser degree, in the public eye. Some are gifted with chutzpah, bless them, and can use the notoriety as a bully-pulpit, but not everyone is made of such stern stuff.

I'm not saying that transitions aren't successful or that there are not thousands of now happy men and women who have solved a major life problem and are now more productive than ever. But it's not a panacea. Chronic depression, ADD, personality disorders, ad infinitum are still there for many and must still be dealt with.

We cannot - must not - judge. We must love. We must support. I regret that posting with all my heart. I had no right to criticize this person's choice on journalistic or any other grounds. I did, however, have a deep obligation to try to understand - as did all who came within the slightest contact of either Christine Daniels or Mike Penner. Stereotype or not, I have felt from the beginning that to be a woman is to be open to the Divine Feminine, which is the embodiment of compassion and nurture. I am ashamed that these qualities were not with me that day. And I am still saddened by the loss of an excellent writer and a good human being.

Brother and Sister

I haven't posted since December. It's enough to say that I've been overwhelmed with work and with a continuing lack of privacy and time to think of something worth saying. So I had decided to simply put up a humorous post saying I was still alive. I've done it before, about a year ago, with a picture of Madeline Usher from Roger Corman's House of Usher. I just spent a fruitless half hour looking for another picture of Madeline and didn't find one that suited my fancy. As I was looking, though, I began to wonder why I'm fixated upon this particular story. Hmmm...

An artsy but ineffectual male has a twin sister who is rendered ineffectual by her lapses into catalepsy. She appears to succumb, and he puts her into a coffin which is placed deep within the bowels of their ancestral mansion (read consciousness). This coffined-up sister comes to, and with superhuman strength pushes off the coffin lid and forces open the huge oaken door of the dungeon to which she has been consigned.

"Oh whither shall I fly? Will she not be here anon? Is she not hurrying to upbraid me for my haste? Have I not heard her footstep on the stair? Do I not distinguish that heavy and horrible beating of her heart? Madman!” — here he sprang furiously to his feet, and shrieked out his syllables, as if in the effort he were giving up his soul — “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door!"

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the potency of a spell — the huge antique panels to which the speaker pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust — but then without those doors there did stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the lady Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the evidence of some bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon the threshold — then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the terrors he had anticipated.

I keep coming back to this story -- have done so since I first read it decades ago.

I wonder why.

I wonder if my alter-ego, who is so protective of me and of whom I am so fond, has anything to worry about.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get out of this bloody nightgown and take a shower.

Angels in Training

I’m wondering, given my slightly addictive and obsessive personality, if signing on to FaceBook was a good idea. I used to spend an inordinate amount of time posting to this blog, checking to see if anyone was reading it, commenting on other blogs, etc. Now I’m spending an inordinate amount of time posting to FB, checking to see if anyone is reading it, commenting on other postings, etc. (I think I’m seeing a pattern here.) My FB friends run about 70/30: transwomen/feminist spirituality, with a couple of cisgendered males to even things out. (This isn’t counting three Middle Eastern males who sent friend requests out of nowhere that I’ve kept in FB Limbo.) I want to concentrate on transwomen right now.

I’m seeing a broad swath of this sisterhood. I’ve been friended by artists, lawyers, homemakers, educators, activists, doctors, women who work with their hands and girls who just wanna have fun. What impresses me beyond the eclectic makeup of this group is the almost universal sense of altruism. When I called this a sisterhood, I wasn’t kidding. If anyone states that she is feeling upset, if anyone is in trouble, if anyone is hurt, friends come flocking, some with words of comfort and encouragement, others with physical help.

I’ve always felt that connecting to my womanhood was connecting to my higher and more nurturing self. I see this in spades in my sisters. One couple comes to mind whose names I’ll not include out of respect for their privacy: transwomen who are married to each other, one is a lawyer and one is retired from construction, I believe. Part of their Christmas holiday was spent taking underprivileged children on an outing (and this was only one of several altruistic acts). One comment read: “You are Angels!” I have to concur. But I see this kind of giving behavior all the time, and I do not count it an act of egotism when it is posted on FB; it is a sharing of love.

I had a friend, a fellow storyteller, a cisgendered woman who was tragically taken from us nine years ago this coming May. Lora had this kind of giving quality. In one of her personal stories she referred to herself as an “Angel in Training.” I miss her even now. But I see her in so many of my sisters.

I’ve been looking at angels quite a bit over the past weeks. They are beautiful creatures, close to the creator, who transcend the boundaries of male and female. They can be fierce, like St. Michael fighting the Devil, but they also embody the female qualities of compassion and nurture.

We are not perfect, physically or morally. Many of us have understandably rejected religion. We’re not angels, but I see all about me Angels in Training.