The Breaking Time

A story of a veteran and his wife

A Waterloo veteran and his wife, c1850s

I'm running around in between journalism work and trying to arrange details for an upcoming trip, so I'd figured I would put this out there for all you hungry readers. 

I discovered the above photo through the dear people at Coilhouse, who last Friday, called for stories based on this wonderful old photo.

As longtime readers may recall, this sort of thing strikes both my heartstrings and creative brain juices. Saturday morning, I was in a particularly fervent writing mood and quickly dashed out the following mini-piece. I posted a pre-minor edits version in the comments over at Coilhouse, but I figured I'd post it here too.

Remember that "there is no they" applies to people in the past as well as our present time. Their lives were as rich, real and complicated as our own:

It was not a young man’s war when he left for it, and he was not a young man when he returned. His shoulder had been pounded raw by Brown Bess’ continual kick. Shortly after he and his comrades paraded through the cheering streets he found that his right hand began to tremble.

He tried to hide it, some days better than others, leaving those days in the past along with his uniform, the simmering retch of amputation yards and the morning he shot a man out of a tree. All disappeared far behind ruddy cragged cheeks and a slow, even smile.

Still, he could forget things, especially all those years later. So his hat was tattered, the brim tilted and he fumbled just to get his coat over one button. The medal, however, stood polished to a shine.

She was not young either, by the time he returned. The home caught fire two years after he marched away. While she survived leaping from the window, the fall injured her jaw. It healed, but that side of her face stood out, fixed in its scars, from the other. She made no pains to hide it – hiding was not her way – and secretly enjoyed sharpening the wry expression it made so easy.

There was much work to be done. She had no time for church; the house Bible remained dusty and little-opened. On occasion she could quote it, if called for in conversation. Blessedly, she still sang. So did he, though cruder tunes than hers; she even laughed at them once in awhile, before her hands shot up to cover smiling lips.

When the photographer came, she drew the bonnet, scarf and gloves carefully out of the ancient, fire-scarred trunk. Her hands had been cleaned carefully and before she slid her fingers into the leather, took particular note to cover the clinging smell of kitchen meat with precious, saved drops of Oxford Lavender. He clasped his right in his left, to hide the twitch, leaning forward on heavy shoulders. The young cameraman’s many attempts to adjust his equipment amused her, as did his ill-concealed blushing beneath her steady gaze.

Husband and wife both passed a few years later, within the same week. Each swore on their respective deathbeds that they had never loved another so deeply, or so true.

Comments welcome.

Eco-pirates and breaking borders

The international crew of the Sea Shepherd trawler Farley Mowat, pirate flag a'flyin.

With the release of the documentary At the Edge of the World, the activities of the Sea Shepherd eco-pirates are gaining wider media attention. In brief; Sea Shepherd has been around for 30 years, and, with crews composed of members from more than 15 nations, uses  array of re-fitted ships known as "Neptune's Navy" to confront, sink or stop whalers. The tactics vary; including ramming, boarding actions and destroying drift nets.

They've also been known to undertake land-based operations, sabotaging whaling stations and sinking ships in harbor. Their reach, like their membership, is international: they've hit all over the world.

Most recently, they've become known for confronting the Japanese whaling fleets, who, in contravention of international treaties on whaling, hunt and slaughter about 1,100 whales a year for "research purposes." Their opponents have dubbed them "terrorists" (an overused word if ever there was one), but as the Sea Shepherd group goes out of their way to avoid causing deaths, to the point of offering to assist searches for lost whaling ships, the description is ludicrous.

The title of "pirate" however, they proudly claim, as can be seen from the imagery on their flag, or bailing one of their captains out with doubloons.

I first became aware of Sea Shepherd through an excellent New Yorker profile of their founder, ex-Greenpeace activist Paul Watson.

In many ways their very existence reflects our changing times. Ideology increasingly cuts across national borders, as evidenced by Sea Shepherd's polyglot crews and multiple bases. The abundance of cast-off equipment created by industrialization also allows them to carry out their operations on a relatively shoestring budget, while the pirates of old (fighting for money, not ideology, as their Somali descendants still do) had to capture their vessels. They seem to have adroitly managed both the legal and confrontational aspects of their work: Sea Shepherd is a legit non-profit (tax deductible donations and all), and its website even touts special Visa cards with pictures of frolicking marine life.

Of course, they're far from the only subculture to have such international reach, or combine a public face with a more subversive underbelly. But they're a particularly militant and durable manifestation, because unlike most, their confrontations with the authorities has demonstrated how hard it is to shut down an ideology in a globalized world.

More than one national government has condemned them as criminals and set out to stop them; said government will then arrest members or stop certain operations, but Sea Shepherd's been in operation for three decades and show no signs of stopping. 

If the trailer is any indication, At the Edge of the World, which I look forward to seeing, seems to side pretty heavily with Sea Shepherd, but offers a (dramatically scored) glimpse into their operations and the ideals that drive them.

Addicted: Mexico's drug legalization offensive

Police officers search residents for drugs in the Zona Norte of Tijuana, Mexico, in March. Photo by Guillermo Arias, from the Denver Post's excellent series.

Word comes today that Mexico, plagued by drug gang wars that have left more than 11,000 dead and verged into civil collapse, has legalized drugs for personal use: 

MEXICO CITY — Mexico now has one of the world's most liberal laws for drug users after eliminating jail time for small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and even heroin, LSD and methamphetamine.

"All right!" said a grinning Ivan Rojas, a rail-thin 20-year-old addict who endured police harassment during the decade he has spent sleeping in Mexico City's gritty streets and subway stations.

But stunned police on the U.S. side of the border say the law contradicts President Felipe Calderon's drug war, and some fear it could make Mexico a destination for drug-fueled spring breaks and tourism.

Such things were, of course, completely unknown before. 

"Now they will go because they can get drugs," said San Diego Police Chief William Lansdowne. "For a country that has experienced thousands of deaths from warring drug cartels for many years, it defies logic why they would pass a law that will clearly encourage drug use."

Enacted last week, the Mexican law is part of a growing trend across Latin America to treat drug use as a public health problem and make room in overcrowded prisons for violent traffickers rather than small-time users.

Brazil and Uruguay have already eliminated jail time for people carrying small amounts of drugs for personal use, although possession is still considered a crime in Brazil. Argentina's Supreme Court ruled out prison for pot possession on Tuesday and officials say they plan to propose a law keeping drug consumers out of the justice system.

Colombia has decriminalized marijuana and cocaine for personal use, but kept penalties for other drugs.

Well no, Chief Lansdowne, it actually makes perfect sense. The drug cartels plaguing Mexico have cash for weapons, mercenaries and bribes because they're selling a product that makes them a 3000 percent profit. Why is the profit that large, because criminalizing something in highly sought after as drugs results in people suddenly willing to pay a lot of money to get it. 

The Mexican government has tried to suppress the cartels through military means, and almost been brought to the brink of ruin by the conflict. So someone had a brainstorm: if we decriminalize the user end of it, drugs will become less risky, then less expensive and thus the cartel warchests will go down, helping to restore government control over the country.

We'll see if it works, but these moves by Mexico and other Latin American countries mark a watershed in the slow shift away from the prohibitionist policies that have dominated drug policy for about a century.

Interestingly, they also mark the continuing death-knell of the idea that nation-states can progressively order or "improve" their populace away from their "baser" urges, which had its high point in the early 20th century adoption of alcohol Prohibition in many countries. Mexico seems to have tacitly accepted that people will do drugs, now viewing it as a health issue: something best monitored and channeled instead of forcefully crushed. 

Importantly, what's compelled them to do this is pure politics: they want to maintain their state and its power.

Poems for Friday: Ode to Broken Things

The name of this blog is carefully chosen, reflecting my belief that we are in a time where many old things are breaking, and that this brings opportunity and peril in equal measures. 

On that note, enjoy this beautiful reminder from Pablo Neruda. Everything breaks. Sometimes that's the good news.

Things get broken  

at home  

like they were pushed  

by an invisible, deliberate smasher.  

It's not my hands  

or yours  

It wasn't the girls  

with their hard fingernails  

or the motion of the planet.  

It wasn't anything or anybody  

It wasn't the wind  

It wasn't the orange-colored noontime  

Or night over the earth  

It wasn't even the nose or the elbow  

Or the hips getting bigger  

or the ankle  

or the air.  

The plate broke, the lamp fell  

All the flower pots tumbled over  

one by one. That pot  

which overflowed with scarlet  

in the middle of October,  

it got tired from all the violets  

and another empty one  

rolled round and round and round  

all through winter  

until it was only the powder  

of a flowerpot,  

a broken memory, shining dust.  

And that clock  

whose sound  

was  

the voice of our lives,  

the secret  

thread of our weeks,  

which released  

one by one, so many hours  

for honey and silence  

for so many births and jobs,  

that clock also  

fell  

and its delicate blue guts  

vibrated  

among the broken glass  

its wide heart  

unsprung.  

Life goes on grinding up  

glass, wearing out clothes  

making fragments  

breaking down  

forms  

and what lasts through time  

is like an island on a ship in the sea,  

perishable  

surrounded by dangerous fragility  

by merciless waters and threats.  

Let's put all our treasures together  

-- the clocks, plates, cups cracked by the cold --  

into a sack and carry them  

to the sea  

and let our possessions sink  

into one alarming breaker  

that sounds like a river.  

May whatever breaks  

be reconstructed by the sea  

with the long labor of its tides.  

So many useless things  

which nobody broke  

but which got broken anyway.

The Rundown: Senators, Shiites, Congress and Siouxsie Sioux

Hello there, girls and boys. It's been a busy day on the journalism front today, so I'm just going to highlight some items of interest and let your deviant minds take over from there.

* The Kennedy who most changed America The best obituary on Ted Kennedy I've read yet, focusing particularly on his role as the runt of the dynasty litter.

* Shiite leader's death leaves coalition reeling A canny diplomat, Abdul Aziz Al-Hakim managed, amazingly to be good friends with both Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei and George W. Bush. He's one of the people that Western media rarely ever focus on, but has played a huge role in Iraqi politics. His death, from cancer, leaves the powerful Shiite coalition facing a questionable future.

Interestingly, both Kennedy and Al-Hakim's deaths serve as a reminder of how personal politics remains. Larger trends have a major effect, but the fate of everything from legislation to avoiding civil war often comes down to individual leaders and personalities, and the loyalties they command.

* My Twitter reportage on Shuler and health care reform  Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC), the whip for the conservative Blue Dog Democrats and the congressman for Asheville's district, talked health care reform today. I tried to incorporate good quotes, substantial background info and decent reporting into 140 character blasts. Comments and feedback welcome; it's a brave new world for us journalists.

* Siouxsie Sioux = always awesome 'Nuff said.

iPhone Government: Tim O'Reilly responds to my critique

Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta, Associated Press

Tim O'Reilly has offered this reply, via e-mail, to my critique of his government-as-platform idea: 

You make a thought-provoking critique, but I don't think you really  

understand what I mean by "government as platform."

 

A good platform is more than a foundation. It's also a set of rules. A  

good platform provides security, predictable (but not straitjacketed)  

user experience, garbage collection :-), protection against bad  

actors, and recovery from catastrophic failure.

 

I'm not calling for government to be a "mere foundation," but an  

active partner whose goal is to provide fundamental services while  

sparking additional services from the private sector.

 

I find the iPhone app store versus the traditional cell phone  

experience a great analogy. Apple has figured out how to harness the  

developer community to build way more services (apps) than they  

themselves could or would ever provide, while maintaining control over  

user experience, still staying responsible for usability, security  

etc. Sometimes Apple is too controlling, even. Being a platform  

doesn't mean abdicating responsibility; it means thinking differently  

about how to use it most effectively.

 

I don't think it's easy to see all the implications of the analogy,  

but it's a productive one to pursue.

I'd like to thank him for taking the time to reply and further detail his ideas. Whatever criticisms or concerns I may have, Government 2.0 is opening up a vital discussion that's been too long ignored by both politicians and technologists alike. The more minds — from whatever background — that we can get thinking about what to do about our governmental systems breaking down, the better.

He also makes a good point. In retrospect I read too much into his remarks about returning government to "a lean platform for collective action." Both from the explanation above and from further reading of O'Reilly's thoughts on civic action, it's clear that his ideas do not favor as drastic a scaling back as I implied. For that misunderstanding, I owe both he and my readers a sincere apology.

The iPhone analogy is apt, as it implies a striving for balance between individual innovation and a larger structure to check its excesses.

Nonetheless, I'm still concerned about Government 2.0 not accounting for the venality of politics (possibly my own bias speaking here). I spent part of today listening to talks by O'Reilly and others, featured on the Gov. 2.0 homepage. During those, I got some of the same feeling as when I read the original article: rapidly alternating between cheering (hackathons on legislator records? Yes!) and wincing.

There's more to the efforts to improve governmental information (and making that info widely available) than I'd originally thought. It's genuinely exciting stuff, and if successful, would be a godsend for everyone from embattled hard news journalists like myself to concerned citizens such as you, dear reader.

Holding open contests like Apps for America is an excellent idea; something that finally begins to break up the isolation that has hampered governmental services for so long.

A good example of my concerns, though, is Gunnar Hallekson's talk on applying open source principles to government. There's great stuff in there, like his advice that government too, is made up of plenty of smart people and it's thus better to work with them than simply assume they'll screw everything up.

However, he also posits that government programs would be less expensive and more successful if they were less afraid to fail. This is true. Yet no politician is going to want to explain "well we threw $1 million at designing this and it failed utterly, but it's part of a process" to their constituents come election time, and any opponent worth their salt is going to bludgeon them badly with it. Not fairly, no, but dealing with unfair attacks is an essential part of politics.

It's worth keeping in mind that this is because politics is what arises not when we agree (that a needed road repair should happen, to use O'Reilly's example) but when we don't. That's where I think the iPhone analogy has its limits: people don't see eye to eye on which ills should be solved, where roads should be built and through which neighborhoods. 

Unlike competing Apps, in those cases it's impossible to pursue both options and see which one is more effective. Laws ban or restrict things or they don't. Projects get built or they don't. Those conflicts are the heart of politics and won't disappear, even if government tries to spark innovation in those areas by active partnerships with private entities.

Solving any social ill is going to require not just getting the "right people" at the table, it's going to mean having to deal with those who may be wrong, but simply have power, and naturally don't think they're wrong at all. If necessary, it's going to require building coalitions and clout to overcome them.

One thing I hope changes is the perception that this, due to the Obama administration inviting more open sourcers to the table, is the big opening before electoral politics takes over. It shouldn't be. It can't be. 

Truly changing government for the better will be a long struggle and to be successful, it will have to eventually become the new political consensus, not the hallmark of any single administration. Part of that will be learning to deal with electoral politics directly as an inevitable part of making those changes stick. 

Perhaps the largest concern of mine arose in remarks about using data to design better prisons. By itself, there's nothing wrong with this, but it reveals a blind spot: the question of why we have so many prisons reveals far more pressing issues.

In some ways this wave of technologists reminds one of the technocrats who flooded into government in the Kennedy and Johnson eras, eager to apply modern statistics to solve a variety of problems. That worked spectacularly in some areas, but it also proved a test case in hubris, as well as the limits of data and raw intellect to solve problems for which there are no clear metrics.

That doesn't have to happen this time, but it should serve as a cautionary tale going forward. It's good advice for all of us to be aware of unintended consequences and the limits of our own perspectives.

P.S.- O'Reilly had originally tried to send in his remarks as a comment to my previous post, but was denied by Typepad. I'm trying to get this issue worked out now. If anyone else is having similar troubles, let me know via e-mail.

O'Reilly's quest: The problem (and benefit) of technologist politics

Yes, Tim, people are indeed really complicated. Photo by Adam Tinworth

Tim O'Reilly is, by all accounts, a brilliant man. Founder of O'Reilly Media, investor, open source advocate and well-respected technologist. Now he wants to Redefine the Role of Government. Cue fanfare!

Goddammit, not this shit again. 

Here's the word, from an extremely O'Reilly-friendly piece in Read, Write, Web: 

Some people go to Washington to try to make the government more honest; others try to make it smaller. Technologist Tim O'Reilly is spending time in Washington, and bringing Washington officials to San Francisco, to do something different - perhaps something more realistic. O'Reilly is trying to help government become a platform for innovation. A "government as platform" would supply raw digital data and other forms of support for private sector innovators to build on top of.

---

Now he's brokering meetings of Obama administration officials and bleeding-edge geeks.

"What I learned when I went to Washington," O'Reilly told me by phone as he drove down a California highway earlier this month, "was how much the dialogue is determined by the companies that go there." O'Reilly is a man in the habit of helping determine dialogue around important issues and the opportunity the Obama administration offers to change government is no different. "[Google CEO] Eric Schmidt told me - 'tell a big story - talk to people and then share what you've learned.'"

O'Reilly is talking to people, but he's helping people talk to each other as well. He's introducing officials like Vivek Kundra, the new CIO of the Federal government, and Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra to ground-breaking hackers like geek rennaisance man Chris Messina and YCombinator founder Paul Graham. He's bringing together geospatial visionaries and the government officials that provide them the GPS data they work with.

"What I've learned from all these conversations," O'Reilly says,"is about government as a platform. It's not just social media use by government, or government using wikis. No, it's something more profound. How do you think like a platform provider? We've moved our government from a lean vehicle for collective action, and over the last 200 years it has become so strong that it's now 40% of GDP. I want to go back to the original vision of the role of government: a convener of things that we as individuals and companies can't do alone. Standard setting, pilot programs; government providing enabling technologies for citizens to serve themselves.

"This morning we did a call with the White House and some geohackers, talking about what's wrong with government geodata now and how could it be fixed. The government people said we need to translate this into real projects that will appeal to politicians. 'If you fix this kind of geodata then we'll be able to provide this service - street safety, education attainment, public policy objectives,' was what they wanted to hear from the hackers. It's really about social innovation, building better tools for us as a nation to use technology to focus on real problems."

In one concise package, O'Reilly has demonstrated both the benefits and calamitous pitfalls to technophiles leaping into changing politics.

To start with the positive, there's some real merit here. I'm much, much more in favor of O'Reilly-style calls for technophiles to do something important instead of sitting around waiting for the "end of politics." Getting involved is an essential first step.

He's also completely right about the archaic state of government information. In the 21st century, there's absolutely no reason why information should be so fractured, or bureaucracies so unresponsive. This is an area where bringing in technological innovation can be a major boon.

But the fact is that perceiving government's prime future as "a platform for innovation" is dead, stone blind. 

Governments, whatever form they do or will take, have to do a lot of things. They have to be the final arbiter of social disputes, have enough popular backing that civil wars doesn't erupt, provide support in time of massive natural disaster, maintain a tight hold on the "legitimate" use of violence and hopefully ensure the reality of a basic level of human rights. That's also not a comprehensive list by any means.

Enabling innovation can be a role they fill, sometimes quite well (e.g. NASA's golden age), but by necessity that's secondary towards some of the more basic functions above.

As near as I can tell, O'Reilly would like to see government instead serve as a clearinghouse for information and an occasional Mr. Moneybags for budding entrepreneurs, who will use Technology (magic that it is) to then solve the problems we face.

The problem here is that for better and worse, O'Reilly is seeing government as most of us do, from his own perspective. Thus a technophile's faith in gadgetry and a mogul's love of private enterprise are a given. Add those two together, with government acting as a mere foundation, and you seem to have the essence of "government as platform."

While he no doubt is being honestly altruistic here, it's telling that this form of government would be really, really beneficial to technologist entrepreneurs: in short, people like him.

That's a flaw, and a nasty one. For one thing, it's hard to see how a "government as platform" would handle issues of power, violence and class; the most pressing for any society.

A government redefined to mostly provide background support for private entities could well make some of these problems worse, ceding the field to factions that it should instead curb or balance. Power doesn't go away when government steps out of an area; it simply changes hands, and may end up wielded by those who abuse it far worse.

Furthermore, it's not clear what incentives private entities would have to work on the pressing problems O'Reilly wants to see tackled. In many cases, it may be in their interest not to see those crises solved at all. 

He's right to smack "the old model" that established business lobbies strive to preserve. But there's a reason they do that. Like O'Reilly, they want a government that benefits their own and, like most technologists, he's a really smart person who has a really hard time grasping human venality as a major factor in politics.

Due to that, it's not hard to envision "government as platform" leading to a John-Robb style Privatopia; a pretty hellish outcome for any but the very wealthy. 

There's nothing sinister here, O'Reilly is simply doing what most do, including the legal and business classes that dominate the current political system: see the "best government" from their own perspective, and usually as the one that would do them the most good. 

He's obviously got some great ideas, but this is a reminder of the need to have many different perspectives at the table when grappling with political problems.

The Busker Dilemma

Asheville Buskers. Photo by bfc07

So there I am, typing away furiously during a particularly busy day at work, when a local busker (and Asheville has a fuck ton of them) began butchering Wish You Were Here for the nine thousandth time in front of the Big Iron. This particular gentleman has done this for long periods of time, day after day, in exactly the same spot. But on this particular day I'm on a very tight deadline and little sleep.

So I send off a brief, bitter blast on Twitter (where else?) and quickly receive this interesting bit of news about Birmingham, UK's harsh way of dealing with buskers they don't like:

James Ryan and Andrew Stevens only know how to play 'Wonderwall' by Oasis and George Michael's 'Faith'.

Mr Ryan, a guitar player, and Mr Stevens, who would hit dustbin lids with drum sticks, had been playing the two songs to people in the Moseley area for the last 18 months.

Mr Ryan, 40, from Edgbaston, Birmingham, and Mr Stevens, also known as Andrew Cave, 39, of no fixed address, have been banned from entering parts of Moseley and playing musical instruments in public in the area.

The pair were also banned from begging anywhere in England and Wales.

They were warned they faced jail if they breached the two-year anti-social behaviour orders handed down on Wednesday by District Judge Qureshi at Birmingham Magistrates Court.

After the hearing, Mr Ryan said: "The whole thing's about playing a guitar, it's a joke. Most people loved it."

Birmingham City Council said the pair stood outside various pubs in Moseley singing and begging, often playing from early evening into the early hours. The pair also waited outside taxi ranks and cash points along St Mary's Row demanding money.

People leaving pubs at closing time would often join in with them. But as well as the excessive noise nuisance, fights would often break out between groups heading home, the council said.

This got the civil libertarian in me fuming and gnashing in the opposite direction. How dare they? Even if I don't like a particular busker, harsh legal penalties for free expression is just wrong, dammit! 

Then Kudra, a former busker herself, chimes in, supporting Birmingham's actions and pointing out that bad buskers are hell on passerby, surrounding businesses and, well, other buskers too. She asked what I'd do to stop such a nuisance.

Turns out busking, of all things, is a complicated flashpoint that touches on issues of economics, public space and how we deal with the clashes of free expression and communal peace of mind in ever diversifying societies. More below the jump.

Poems for Friday: Two scavengers in a truck, two beautiful people in a Mercedes

"If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenges of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic."

-Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Class is often the societal elephant in the room: immensely powerful, rarely addressed. That makes it a particularly important topic here, because Breaking Times have an uncomfortable habit of raising those hidden issues to the surface, sometimes brutally.

Complicated as it is, it's not always an easy topic for poets to address without losing eloquence or descending into cliche.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti probably has the quintessential Breaking Time poetry quote above and he's done many great things during his life, but I'll admit I'm usually not a huge fan of his poetry: it often winds up being too didactic, better suited to the paragraphs of essay than the stanzas of verse, even free verse. Wild Dreams of a New Beginning is good, and might be more appropriate to apocalyptic thoughts.

But fuck it, I like this one better. Ferlinghetti's not just good here; he nails it. It hits class exactly, capturing the force of the divide with wrenching simplicity, but in a deeply human way. Perfect for Friday.

At the stoplight waiting for the light

nine a.m. downtown San Francisco

a bright yellow garbage truck 

with two garbagemen in red plastic blazers

standing on the back stoop

one on each side hanging on

and looking down into 

an elegant open Mercedes

with an elegant couple in it

The man

in a hip three-piece linen suit

with shoulder-length blond hair & sunglassed

The young blond woman so casually coifed 

with short skirt and coloured stockings

on the way to his architect's office

And the two scavengers up since four a.m.

grungy from their route

on the way home

The older of the two with grey iron hair

and hunched back 

looking down like some

gargoyle Quasimodo 

And the younger of the two 

also with sunglasses&long hair

about the same age as the Mercedes driver

And both scavengers gazing down

as from a great distance

at the cool couple

as if they were watching some odorless TV ad

in which everything is always possible 

And the very red light for an instant

holding all four close together

as if anything at all were possible

between them

across that small gulf 

in the high sea

of this democracy 

All Tomorrows: The Birthgrave

My column on Tanith Lee's out-of-print, brilliant feminist sword and sorcery epic is up on Coilhouse:

“To wake, and not to know where, or who you are, not even to know what you are—whether a thing with legs and arms, or a brain in the hull of a great fish—that is a strange awakening. But after awhile, uncurling in the darkness, I began to uncover myself, and I was a woman.”

So begins Tanith Lee’s 1975 novel The Birthgrave, her first. I stumbled upon it some years ago, yellowing long out of print in a bargain bin.

I usually try to avoid revisiting authors too much on All Tomorrows, and regular readers will remember that I sang Lee’s praises for The Silver Metal Lover. But lately this column has been tracing the lesser known paths of fantasy and epic. No discussion of epic during sci-fi-fanta-whatever’s Deviant Age would be complete without delving into The Birthgrave.

It is a Sword and Sorcery epic, thunderously bloody and sensual in a way that would make Robert E. Howard pant. Yet it is also a deeper story of character and identity: a feminist work of a piece with the questions sweeping through its time.

For Lee’s (at first) nameless heroine awakes with nothing but questions, as the eruption of a volcano shakes her from a seemingly endless sleep with memories of hidden power, tragedy and a bottomless sense of guilt.

Driven to find answers, she runs into Übermensch types who try to turn her into the women featured on the covers of your average Sword and Sorcery tale— slave, figurehead goddess, concubine — clinging open-mouthed to the leg of some buffed-up conqueror.

But this is not their story: it is hers. As she survives (or buries) them all, as Lee sucks the reader into the elusive quest for power over one’s own life, she makes sure you’ll never see a dread sorceress the same way again.