Chantal's Blog

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by Chantal Tseng

Above and Beyond

“The truth is people are an extraordinary mixture of heroism and cowardice.” – Agatha Christie, “4:50 from Paddington”

(I co-host with Loyalty Bookstores, an Agatha Christie Book Club with Sherry and tea. Since the Pandemic, we have taken our club to the Virtual Zoom format. Check my events page to join our next discussion!)

I’m feeling a bit contrarian today. Perhaps I can attribute this to our current climate, one of lies presented as truths, arguments positioned to questionably benefit the privileged, and of course my favorite, the widespread pandemic (not THAT one) of Imposter Syndrome. I never knew the term “gaslighting” until the year before last. It is hard to truly grasp ready realities amidst what seems like the new norm. I imagine the rate of paranoid episodes must be rocketing through the roof. Or perhaps there are no longer any roofs and the paranoid conspiracy theorists are all finally relaxing because THEY aren’t the crazy ones anymore. I grew up hearing about the Golden Rule every other week, the starving children of Ethiopia and how they need our help, the evils of hairspray on our beloved ozone layer, and of course, Batman. How the dark hero is in fact super-powerless but goes out of his way to clean up crime and do the right thing. It would seem there is nothing very Batman about the wealthy and privileged men of today. We were all supposed to be ourselves, or better, be Batman. What happened?

Artwork from Nathaniel Nord

When Bruce Wayne was just a kid, he witnessed the brutal murder of his parents and could do nothing. He personified the intense fear and cowardice of a child in an impossible situation. That trauma seeded itself deep and led to his adult ventures of extreme heroism. Also, there were bats in a cave.

I love comics. There is something visceral in graphic novel art and dialogue that leaps from the page straight into one’s brain. They are the ultimate in page-turner fictions.

In “4:50 From Paddington,” there is a character, Dr. Quimper, whose name drilled a hole into my head for the entirety of this past week. His character is the origin of the quote above. I eventually placed his name to be the same as the evil dwarf mind-controlling entity from “The Invisibles” by Grant Morrison. It has been a long while since I thought of this series. I recall it being a whole LOT out there, above and beyond you might say, albeit from an unusual angle. The super rich character who finances the Invisibles team,* has a back story of being abducted by aliens at one point. It would seem that this experience is also the only thing that makes him a tolerable person. His name is Mason. I particularly enjoyed his insight in Book 4: “…If it wasn’t for the bats, insects would take over the world.” Lately, it feels like the world is encouraging me to revisit “The Invisibles.” Paranoid conspiracies? Check. Mind altering realities? Check. A badass team of freedom fighters taking on the man & other worldly foes with their mixed LGBTQ / BIPOC selves & allies? Check. Seems appropriate for today. Might even be less out there than it used to be. It might also be horribly dated.

“Sometimes it’s only madness that makes us what we are.”
― Grant Morrison, Batman: Arkham Asylum – A Serious House on Serious Earth

Grant Morrison is more well known for his authorship of some of the very best Batman stories. You know them. The truly dark and mind bending ones. Reading “Arkham Asylum” inspired so much of my young 20’s when I was mildly curious about the fine line of sane and insane. I realize that might sound odd. I like to think my creative impulses run dark and deep but that I’m a genuinely nice person. But seriously, this is why Batman is so awe inspiring. He stood at the edge of the abyss. He has one foot in and out of two incompatible worlds. He owns all of it.

When Christie writes about the insane, she is often very subtle about it. A villain wears the mask of society but has no moral opposition to murdering someone close for money or other selfish endeavors. And then one murder begets another. While I haven’t read all her novels yet, I imagine she never brings in a character like The Joker. The epitome of pure anarchy of self and wealth. I wonder how Miss Marple would equate her dark take on the intricacies of human nature to such a nemesis or how Hercule Poirot would get one step ahead of the brilliant mastermind, R’as al Ghul. **

*Because, real talk, one always need a super wealthy patron to do these sorts of things. I would argue that Spider-man is the exception except look at what they’ve done to his story via Iron-Man.

**Arguably, “The Big Four,” (1927) might very well answer this call of a challenge. I’m not so sure it was a success, however. It had an almost comic super villain and hero vibe that didn’t feel natural. Then again, the first Batman comic didn’t appear until 1939.

by Chantal Tseng

Back to School

“A school bus is a magic show full of disappearing acts.” – Jason Reynolds, “Look Both Ways”

In Washington D.C., you have to renew your driver’s license every eight years. Make sense. After all, driving a vehicle is essentially like wielding a large weapon. It is worthwhile to be reminded of the core principles but also to be updated on possible new regional laws. I imagine most people just apply for a renewal online and pay the fee. But, I recall the one time I was a couple days past the deadline. This meant re-taking the written test. It was a good idea. I had definitely forgotten a lot of the specifics. A little back to school isn’t such a bad idea. Good thing I had studied before the exam so I could ace it.

Hey so, you know how the global pandemic is devastating our lives and our economy? Seeing 2020 vision is now akin to watching cruel snarling flames lick the less than savory sides of a large rusty dumpster constantly fed with new cringing moments of putrid sustenance to burn on and on and on. What if we as a nation took the next few months off from work, from school, from retirement, from each other and enrolled in a new life school/workshop? Just sort of a buckle down at home*, listen to some lectures, absorb new lessons and have the government pay us to do so type of thing. We just stop, drop everything, and enroll. Course credits earned Pass/Fail. Course load: Choose any five of the following classes: 

Greater Transparency: How to take the honest and clear approach for more efficient communication. Final exam will be writing a letter as a local business delineating the operation and dangers of your products. Taught by Barack Obama.

Re-evaluation 201: Taking a critical double-take inward, learning to unlearn insensitive norms. There will be lots of role playing. Taught by Ibram X. Kendi.

Know Your Rights: Learn how to handle yourself in a protest, how to talk to police, etc. Taught by Mick Jones and Alicia Garza.

Know your own Impact: Realizing the greater range of cause and effect towards more than just ourselves. Taught by any woman not named Karen but ideally Megan Rapinoe.

Appreciate but don’t Appropriate: How to recognize the difference and not steal from other cultures. Taught by a BIPOC chef.

New Vocabulary: What’s in and out for our social dictionary in 2020? Special focus on pronouns. Taught by someone younger than 40, maybe even 30.

Silent Spring: Independent study read of Rachel Carson’s classic. Final exam is to write a haiku.

How to Care About Others: Perhaps unteachable but then again, maybe we just need some love and a class on baking pies. Taught by a Pastry Chef.

Sherry 101: Debunk myths of all sherry only being a sweet cooking wine and learn to appreciate the savory elements of one the world’s greatest wine regions. Taught by me. I need to pay rent.

2 oz. fresh peach juice, 2 oz. coconut milk, 2 dashes allspice dram, 3 oz. Seville-Mandarin Orange Soda, crushed ice, mint, tiny school bus orange peel with cloves
.
buses artfully carved by Kristen Bartholomew & Anna Cleofe

*like we should be doing anyway

by Chantal Tseng

Utopia…Serenity

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”- Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Dispossessed”

***SO VERY MANY SPOILER ALERTS***

In the last few days there have been a slew of powerful summer thunderstorms. I haven’t been wearing my corrective lenses much during this pandemic but I always make the effort to put in my contacts when there is a particularly wicked one. It’s the “best of” in visual natural entertainment with unbeatable surround sound. 

During this period, I decided to stock my mind library with a bit more of the highly underrated Ursula K. Le Guin. I finished “The Dispossessed” on the 20th and “The Lathe of Heaven” yesterday. Not to sound like a naive teenager but, utopia is a kind of mission impossible scenario for the philosophically minded right?

In “The Dispossessed,” an anarchist independent people form a colony on what is akin to the moon. A scientist, alienated since birth, leaves this world to visit the Capitalistic world they broke from almost two centuries before with the hopes of sharing his knowledge of simultaneity and light speed travel. While not a page turner for me, it is super smart, passionate at times, honest and down to earth* written in a time (1974) when dystopian fiction had become solidly rooted within literary spheres.

Funny thing. I had my own simultaneity experience while reading “The Lathe of Heaven” (1971). There’s a part where sirens are going off which coincided with several real time sirens howling through my neighborhood. In the novel, aliens had descended upon Portland, Oregon. In real life, well…I’m not so sure it was aliens. Later on, there is also a section where the sky turns an unnatural green. Lo and behold, my real time skies started getting very creepy dark at a normally bright 4pm. And then, the world shook in both worlds in concert. Very meta. It was also a kind of Bastian/Fantastica of “The Neverending Story” throwback moment.** Almost anyway. Let’s just say the latter would have been more fun, riding Falcor and all.

“The Lathe of Heaven” is about a troubled man, George Orr, of supernatural power to alter reality with his dreams. He cannot control it however, and he suffers from guilt, sleeplessness and drug dependency. Among George’s many effective dreams which are hypnotically manipulated by his court assigned psychologist, Dr. Haber, one is about achieving war deterrence. The mission: World Peace. The dream-into-reality-impossible solution: alien invasion to bring the international bickering peoples together for a single global cause. Sound familiar? If you’re like me, you’ve seen and read this plot device unfold in darkly clever action within “The Watchmen” as well (1986). Similarly, it turns out, we see that the dangerously hopeful yet misguided goal of utopia is paved by violence and serious moral ambiguity.

While thinking about tackling the slippery slope of achieving utopia for humankind, I also just happened to re-watch the end of “Serenity” last night. I quickly thought of Dr. Haber’s character in “The Lathe of Heaven” in relation to The Operative in “Serenity.“

The Operative: This is a good death. There’s no shame in this, in a man’s death. A man who has done fine works. We’re making a better world. All of them, better worlds.

…

Mal: I don’t murder children.

The Operative: I do, if I have to.

Mal: Why? Do you even know why they sent you?

The Operative: It’s not my place to ask. I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.

Mal: So me and mine gotta lay down and die so you can live in your better world?

The Operative: I’m not going to live there… There’s no place for me there, any more than there is for you. Malcolm, I’m a monster. What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done.

“A Wizard of the Earthsea”
1 oz. Kilchoman “Machir Bay” Islay Scotch, 1 oz. La Guita Manzanilla en Rama, 1 oz. Bonal Gentiane-Quina, .75 oz. chilled pu’erh tea. Garnish with fresh thyme.

Le Guin passed away in January of 2018. It is hard not to see her influence carry over to many later brilliant authors. It’s true that a great idea, IE: the power in naming,*** or the mission impossible-ness of utopia, or the instigation of greater evil to spawn a moment of collective good, can birth even better stories than their predecessors. But sometimes they don’t.

…

*This is my attempt at a pun. Although technically, it isn’t earth, but another world called Urras in the Tau Ceti star system.

**Channeling when Bastian realizes he is a part of the story, and must choose a name for the princess or everything will be done for. NO WORRIES. It works out. Incidentally, the book was published in 1979.

***Reference to “The Wizard of Earthsea” series from Le Guin written in 1968.

by Chantal Tseng

Dual Consciousness

“As always, both love and envy swam within him like a pair of horned narwhals. I never knew which one would surface first.” (P.69, The Wolf in the Whale)

narwhals carved by Kristen Bartholomew

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the concept of a “dual consciousness.” In fact, two recently read books spring to mind when I think about the idea of wrestling identities within one’s own brain: “How to Be An Anti-Racist” by Ibram X. Kendi and “The Wolf in the Whale” by Jordanna Max Brodsky. In the former, Kendi discusses how anyone could be racist one moment and anti-racist the next. It just depends how consciously and subconsciously we approach our interactions with others because we have grown up with bias informing our ideas in both flagrant and inconspicuous ways.

In Brodsky’s novel, the main character Omat is an example of a person born “two-spirited,” which means that she has both the female and male spirits in her soul, hunter and wolf. As such, her small tribe chooses her as their next shaman because her condition is rare and magical. As someone with northern native blood in her genealogy, I absolutely want to read about more two-spirited people. (Open to suggestions if you have any!)* Reminds me a bit of my mother who was born left-handed but forced into ambidexterity while being brought up in Catholic schools. 

I like that these authors can talk about the often deemed uncomfortable idea of duality but do so not in Jekyll & Hyde terms. Or perhaps, that is the point. Not talking about our inner warring natures, turmoil, clashing of ideas, and not talking about the contrasting narratives we tell ourselves can possibly evoke a manic or less than sane state. The division of the mind so solidly un-embraced, hidden from plain understanding and acceptance is a classic foundation for many mentally unstable literary characters. This is why there must always be a reckoning, even when it might seem intuitive to avoid such encounters.

Of course, the heart of the conversation always finds its way back to good v. evil. Listening to the devil or the angel on your shoulder. But just as being black is not one or the other, and being female is not one or the other, and being left-handed is not one or the other, it remains problematic as we continue to quantify too much of our world in others and opposites. 

AND on an abstractly related note, July 19th is “National Daiquiri Day.” A classic Daiquiri is often made 2:1:1 rum:sweet:sour. Variants upon variants have been born out of this. At any rate, here is darker, funkier and more bitter variant. Adjust the sour to your preference.

“White wolf, black raven, an eternal partnership.”

(P.75, The Wolf in the Whale)

1.5 oz. Batavia Arack sugar cane spirit, .5 oz. PX Sherry, .25 oz. Braulio Amaro, .75 oz. fresh lime, shaken with cracked ice and double-strained into a chilled coupe.

…

*Hard to also not think about “The Left Hand of Darkness” by Ursula K. Le Guin. Great book.

by Chantal Tseng

Scheherazade

“No one has any idea who made her up, so it’s easy to think she made herself up. But there she is, one of the immortal characters of literature, and how can you not fall in love with somebody who civilizes savage people by telling them stories?” – Salman Rushdie

I often elevate my opinion of a personal bookshelf whenever I find a copy or edition of Arabian Nights. Like many, I loved these stories as a kid and have often revisited them as an adult. Mr. Rushdie’s professed love for these tales are the main reason I try to read one of his novels once a year. Whenever contemporary authors reference these stories, I develop a special glee and renewed interest in reading their work. In an alternate reality, I like to think I studied Literature in addition to Studio Art in College and based my thesis on these tales, or more specifically, on Scheherazade.

Of course, Mr. Rushdie’s “civilizes savage people” words threw me for a moment. In our current atmosphere the thought of civilizing savage people sounds incredibly racist. Suggesting that there are entire peoples that need to be reformed has roots in slavery and in the false idea that some races are better than others. However, in this particular statement, Rushdie is pointing the savage finger at the Persian Sassanid King of the tales. After discovering that his first wife had betrayed him, he makes it a point to punish all women by marrying a different virgin every night and then having her executed the following morning. Seriously messed up. And the worst part is he gets his kingdom to do this for three years. That means a whole lot of people were complicit in this awful terror. I hate to think it but the King’s misogynist murder streak in this day and age might even get him an insanity plea. You know what they say, there is no negotiating with crazy. And yet, we have our mysterious heroine of all heroines.

The fact that Shahrazad must hold the attention of her despotic husband by telling stories sounds a bit like casting a spell requiring the utmost of focus and skill. I am sure I love magic and fantasy because of her.

Her confidence and heart to willingly posit herself as the next victim to the ruler’s uxoricide nonsense, knowing that all she has to work with is her own wit, is the highest form of courage. She is at the heart of all stories I tell when the Strength card in Tarot is pulled from the deck.

Shahrazad’s Tea

Incidentally, for the morbidly minded out there, the 1,001st night of the COVID-19 Pandemic would potentially be September 26th, 2022 based on the official news confirming the first case in China on December 31st, 2019.