Inside Us (Nightbird)
Outside in the night
There are headlights, sidewalks, trees and a ditch
A darkened store hunches beside a car wash.
A nightbird sings and a piece of sky falls
Like hail, or a rock from a bridge.
The night feels so big.
The big news this week was that Steve Jobs passed away. After his death, I kept seeing this image on Facebook:
I had a funny reaction to it. I both liked and disliked it. On the one hand, I thought it was a great tribute to a man who, in spite of various obstacles, managed to achieve phenomenal success. Who doesn’t love an underdog success story? I’ve seen Moneyball twice and I’m not even a big baseball fan.
So why did the image bother me? Hmmm…well, I felt like, on some level, it was also saying that there is really only one type of success. And unless you “change the world” on the epic scale that Steve Jobs did, then you haven’t accomplished much. If your efforts haven’t been felt globally, if you aren’t a billionaire, famous and powerful…well, why not, you loser?
In the past two weeks I’ve been to two fundraisers. Last weekend I attended the Wake County SPCA’s annual Fur Ball. This past weekend I attended the AAS-C’s annual Works of Heart Art Auction Against AIDS. The events are put on by teams of underpaid and/or unpaid workers who fight very hard to make the world a better place. At both events, I watched supporters open their hearts and wallets in spite of the recession. None of these people are billionaires. They are not famous or powerful. I know many of them personally and I know they have faced (and continue to face) obstacles every day…and they make a difference. They are changing the world, too.
Do you ever ask yourself, “Am I making a difference?” The answer is yes, you probably are.
Maybe you rescued a furry friend from an animal shelter and gave it home? You made a difference.
Maybe you didn’t get those new shoes you didn’t need so you could buy that Hello Kitty purse your daughter (or your son for that matter) wanted so badly? You made a difference.
Maybe you met a friend after work even though you were dog-tired because you knew they needed someone to talk to? You made a difference.
No, not on the epic scale that Steve Jobs did, and yes he was an amazing man and I’d love to read a biography on him. But the accomplishments that many people make, on a smaller, quieter level, are still hugely valuable. These folks are not “making excuses” even though you may not have heard of them. They haven’t invented something you use every day, but they are still changing the world—at the community level, which can then lead to the state level, then to the national level, and on and on. After all, a hurricane’s formation can be contingent on a butterfly flapping its wings.
A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd. Illustrated by Jim Kay.
From Amazon.com:
An unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor. At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting—he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd—whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself—Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.
I’ve been waiting anxiously for the US publication of this book (it’s been available in the UK and Australia for months). Jim Kay’s illustrations were what first caught my attention when I read about this book online. Dark. Moody. Moving. Beautiful. (You may visit Jim Kay’s website here, where there are more images of his artwork, as well as more from this book. You may visit author Patrick Ness’ website here.)
I got a call on Tuesday from Quail Ridge Books that my pre-ordered copy was in—a pleasant surprise since I wasn’t expecting it until the end of the month. I picked it up after work, took it home, and read it in one sitting.
It’s a quick read, but not always an easy one. The stark prose and eerie illustrations set the tone of the story early on. Author Patrick Ness steers clear of sentimentality—ensuring that the story never strays from its original idea: that truth is often painful and unfair.
From his bedroom window, Conor can see a yew tree on top of a hill. One night, the yew tree takes on the form of a monster, shambles up to Conor’s window, and speaks to him. (The monster reminded me of another yew tree monster: Green Noah from Lucy Boston’s The Children of Green Knowe, although Patrick Ness’ monster, which speaks directly into Conor’s mind, I found to be scarier.)
The monster says to Conor:
Here is what will happen, Conor O’Malley. I will come to you again on further nights. And I will tell you three stories…And when I have finished my three stories, you will tell me a fourth. You will tell me a fourth, and it will be the truth.
The stories the monster tells Conor make him angry. A good prince is a murderer. An evil queen is rescued. An innocent farmer’s daughter dies for no reason. They seem like, in Conor’s own words, “a cheat.”
“I don’t understand,” Conor says, “Who’s the good guy here?”
There is not always a good guy. The monster says. Nor is there always a bad one. Most people are somewhere in between.
With each story the monster tells him, Conor faces more of life’s truths. And when it comes time for Conor to tell the fourth story, his story, his truth…the book draws to its inevitable conclusion.
The words and pictures deftly capture the fear and instability surrounding 13-year old Conor. The loneliness, the isolation, the frustration…he is dealing with bullies at school, an absent father, an emotionally distant grandmother…and on top of all of this, the guilt and pain of losing a parent.
As the story unfolds, you feel Conor’s fear and anger as he watches his mother succumb to cancer, and the ending of the story is apparent. Any other outcome would not fit the central idea of painful truths (it would be a “cheat”), but knowing the ending did not make the journey any less compelling, or the story any less powerful.
Parts of the story moved me deeply (the tender relationship between Conor and his mother), and parts were so spare and detached they bordered on being cold (the bullying scenes at school). But the honesty and grief of the story is both challenging and satisfying. It grabbed me and didn’t release its hold till the very end.
Stories are the wildest things of all. The monster tells Conor. Stories chase and bite and hunt… When you let them loose, who knows what havoc they might wreak?
Poor Dora picked up the button and turned it in her hand. It was silver, with a naval emblem on it.
She finished reading the diary that night. The final page, stained by seawater, told of the stormy night the captain’s ship was wrecked on the black rocks at the foot of the bluff. She closed the book and sat on the wall made of shells and stones and waited for the sun to rise.
He came just before dawn. He rose from the dark water and stood on the beach, yawning and stretching. He waved to her. She waved back.
I’ve been hard at work on a new project. An art-and-writing project. I’ve been somewhat secretive about it until now. I’m a bit superstitious about all things creative and worry that if I say too much about what I’m working on, I’ll rob it of its power. I will, in effect, jinx myself. And not only that, but what if people ask me how my project is going…and it isn’t? There’s nothing worse than trying to explain to someone how your writing and artwork have hit a brick wall and stalled, when even you don’t understand why that happens sometimes.
But I decided to go ahead and blog about this new project in spite of my fears. So far, it hasn’t stalled. If anything, my frustration has been about not having enough time to spend on it, what with work and family obligations. I am enjoying writing and illustrating this story more than I have enjoyed anything in quite a while.
Here is a preliminary illustration:
I am about 80% done with the first draft of the story. Without saying too much (I don’t want to spoil it), it’s a middle grade story about a boy named Humphrey (that’s him above), a rocky island, two mysterious elderly sisters with a secret (that’s them above, with a metal detector), a lighthouse keeper (you can see the lighthouse in the distance), and a series of vanished ships. There are also lots of other things I love in the story: fossils, ghosts, fishbones, fog, caves, and even a couple of sheep.
I am working on two versions of the story: a written version and a graphic novel version. Here are some of the initial sketches I drew of the characters, including Humphrey. In the bottom left are the Sisters Small of Seacliff Hall, the two mysterious sisters. Drawing the characters really helps me get to know them. I don’t know how it works for most writers, but stories come to me first in a series of pictures. Words come later. This particular story started with an image of Humphrey standing on a foggy ferry landing holding a brown leather suitcase.
The house pictured is an early version of Seacliff Hall, where the two mysterious sisters live. It was originally a cottage, but the story has changed quite a bit since these sketches, and the house has become much larger and more Gothic. (The Sisters Small were once fabulously wealthy, but their fortunes were lost with the decline of the whaling industry.) I did an early color sketch of the house, which I will need to re-do:
So, this is what I have been working on as the summer slipped by…and now August is nearly over and September is around the corner. In addition to hanging out with Humphrey and the Sisters Small, quite a bit has happened since my last post.
My mother has been staying with us. I haven’t lived under the same roof as her since I was a teenager. It’s funny, as a child it was comforting going to sleep at night knowing my parents were right there in the next room in case anything happened. Now, as an adult, it’s the opposite. I am comforted knowing my mother is in the next room, and not in a house all alone, in case anything should happen.
artsee has also been keeping me very busy. We published our one-year anniversary issue in July. We’ve had one of the partners leave, which was sad, but added two new employees, which was exciting.
Last week there was an earthquake and this weekend, a hurricane. No doubt sometime between now and 2012 we will have a meteor strike, and then it won’t matter if I finish writing my story and graphic novel since there will be no one alive to read it.
But anyways, here are some pictures I took from the top of Cape Lookout lighthouse earlier this summer. Humphrey and I hope the lighthouse, and our friends in Beaufort, fared all right through Hurricane Irene.
p.s. apologies for the distracting copyright symbols, but my legal counsel has advised me to include them!
Since the tornadoes, I’ve got dinosaurs on the brain. This was written years ago, on a layover.
In an Airport in Texas
Through geometric window walls
Low clouds fat with rain
Hang over miles of asphalt and dinosaur bones.
Garbled noise funneled through tubes
ricochets in the space
between the I-beams and nylon flags
And punctures artificial air
Thick with the stink of
Cheap padding on plastic chairs.