Leaving Antigua didn't work out as planned. The bus I was going to take never came. So I'm staying another night at Antigua.
It's okay, I'm not on a schedule, really. I'm on Guatemala time now.
Also, I am told there is a procession tonight in Antigua where they make a carpet in the street. That's how it was explained; I don't really understand how it works. I guess I'll see.
I got a double room at the travel agency that has the bus for Q75. With the bus ride it's Q195 total. (Q8 ~ $1). Last night I paid Q80 for a single on the other side of town from the market; obviously that was a rip-off.
I can't decide if I need a nap or coffee. Maybe a little nap, then some coffee, then pics of the carpet in the street.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Antigua de Guatemala
Things are looking up. Made it to Antigua de Guatemala, the old Spanish Colonial capital. Antigua feels familiar, as it´s laid out in the traditional Spanish style, around a central square and a market. Walked around the market & found the artisan´s stalls. I bought Jennifer a traditional Mayan dress & some hand-carved wooden toys for Jeff, including a crocodile, which I am naturally naming Zipacna.
Antigua is kind of claustrophobic, because the streets are barely wide enough for one car and the sidewalks are barely wide enough for one person, where there is a sidewalk at all. The houses are right up on the street and there all joined together. The buildings are stucco brick and adobe, with lots of tile roofs.
There are mountains all around and trees blooming with purple flowers. The streets are full of motorcycles, American and European tourists, and Mayan women in traditional dress walking with loads bundled on their heads. Unleashed dogs lay around everywhere in the street with their eyes half open. Soldiers ride around in small pickup trucks carrying automatic rifles.
It would be very tempting just to hang around in Antigua. It´s set up for tourists, with lots of nice cafes and restaurants with English names that play American music. You can get a hostel room for ten bucks a night.
But that´s not what I´m here for. It´s time to head on toward Huehuetenango. The buses leave out of the southwest corner of the market square. They are rolling works of art decorated in airbrush paint and hot-rod chrome: Furthur, eat your heart out.
I need to get the bus to Chimaltenango. From Chimal I will supposedly be able to get a bus that goes to Huehue, then up to San Mateo. It´s safe to say things are about to get interesting.
I have some great pictures but no way to post them now. I´ll get them up as soon as I can.
Antigua is kind of claustrophobic, because the streets are barely wide enough for one car and the sidewalks are barely wide enough for one person, where there is a sidewalk at all. The houses are right up on the street and there all joined together. The buildings are stucco brick and adobe, with lots of tile roofs.
There are mountains all around and trees blooming with purple flowers. The streets are full of motorcycles, American and European tourists, and Mayan women in traditional dress walking with loads bundled on their heads. Unleashed dogs lay around everywhere in the street with their eyes half open. Soldiers ride around in small pickup trucks carrying automatic rifles.
It would be very tempting just to hang around in Antigua. It´s set up for tourists, with lots of nice cafes and restaurants with English names that play American music. You can get a hostel room for ten bucks a night.
But that´s not what I´m here for. It´s time to head on toward Huehuetenango. The buses leave out of the southwest corner of the market square. They are rolling works of art decorated in airbrush paint and hot-rod chrome: Furthur, eat your heart out.
I need to get the bus to Chimaltenango. From Chimal I will supposedly be able to get a bus that goes to Huehue, then up to San Mateo. It´s safe to say things are about to get interesting.
I have some great pictures but no way to post them now. I´ll get them up as soon as I can.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Inauspucious beginning
Guatemala trip didn't start out well. Missed my perfect 9:00 flight & an instead going thru Houston. I'll get into Guatemala City at 8:00, and the best choice is a 10:30 bus to Huehuetenango. I'll get to San Mateo Ixtlan about the same time, minus the sleep. Well, plane boarding, here goes.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
When narrative is stronger than reality: "Up" and a new definition of magic
Today I watched the Pixar movie Up with my students for the important educational purpose of shutting them up for the last two days of school. As I was watching it, I came to an important new definition of magic, as well as a deeper understanding of how it should be used in fantasy. Is "Up" a magical fantasy? Well, it's not science fiction. It's true that a bunch of helium balloons can lift heavy objects, and in a few instances people have actually flown this way in lawn chairs and such. But it's safe to say that if you have a scene where you float an entire house this way, let alone lift it from its foundations exactly along the line where the floor meets the ground, then you're talking about magic, whether you call it that or not.
People who've written or extensively read fantasy knows there's a special art to including magic in a story. If, at a climactic scene of your fantasy novel, a protagonist who's fallen off a thousand-foot cliff is suddenly able to fly when you've never given any reason before to expect he has this ability then you've used magic poorly in your narrative.
So how do you make a character fly, and make it believable? Or more importantly when you're talking about fantasy set in a contemporary world, how do you change a character that can't fly into one that can? Just giving him a bunch of helium balloons will not do the trick. (In fact, I'd say this is the case even if you can do so in a completely scientifically plausible way; you're writing a story, not a physics textbook.) Since magic is by definition not realistic, the usual term to describe what we're aiming for is "believable."
The current conventional wisdom of how to make magic believable is that it has to have a "system." You have to plan out in advance what your magic can and can't do. You define all its limitations and requirements and necessary raegents. Then you demonstrate these in little ways all throughout the story, preferably in a way that is not totally obvious, so that when the magic is really necessary to advance your plot your reader is surprised and yet also convinced.
But the whole idea of establishing a "system of magic" has always bugged me. To begin with, in traditional mythological stories using magic there is rarely a system established. We don't need to know exactly how an evil sorceress can change Ulysses' crew into pigs, or how an evil fairy can put Briar Rose to sleep until a prince wakes her up. They just can. For that matter, classic fantasy novels don't really have systems of magic either. Can anyone explain to me what system of magic Gandalf was using? How about the White Witch in Narnia?
But more important, defining a magic system betrays a completely contemporary, non-magical way of thinking. Suppose I say that my character can fly if he's acquired three feathers of the Lost Eagle of the Mountain, said the appropriate ritual over a fire into which he's thrown a bag of the droppings of a Chromium Dragon and has spoken to his Bird Spirit in a dream. What I'm really doing then is simply defining an alternate form of technology that works every bit as predictably as the hard drive on my computer (probably a heck of a lot moreso). But magic is not supposed to be predictable. That's practically the definition: magic is when something happens that can't be explained. Clarke's famous dictum that technology sufficiently beyond our understanding is indistinguishable from magic is only true to a very limited degree. Indians who first encountered European "thunder sticks" might have seen them as magical the first few times they got shot at. But Indians were neither stupid nor childish, and realized very quickly they needed to get some guns of their own and figure out how to use them, which is just what they did. In no time the magic weapons just became advanced tech. Similarly, humans in a system such as I described above would very quickly create a breeding line of Lost Eagles, have entrepreneurial dragon-dropping patrols and a whole new profession of Bird Spirit Contact Therapists.
I suspect the whole "magic system" meme was a natural outgrowth of fantasy authors that grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons (like I did). D&D is a game, and a game operates by rules, or what's the point? Therefore, a +3 longsword always increases your probablity of inflicting damage by exactly 15%, and a Magic Missile spell can be cast exactly once by a first level "Magic User" (which has got to be least magical-sounding title they could have come up with for a wizard except perhaps "supernatural events technician").
By contrast, Up has no system of magic. In fact, the non-realistic events that occur are not even described as magical; they just happen. They can get away with this because it's an animation, and we're conditioned exempt cartoons especially from the laws of physics. But I'd argue that in traditional mythology made by societies who didn't have a clearly defined field of "science" from which to deviate, that's how magic was usually included. The word "magic" wouldn't even mean anything until it became an accepted norm that nature cannot operate outside certain very precise rules that we can define by observation (i.e. science).
But that doesn't mean that things can just happen for no reason. Almost from the moment we meet the character of Mr. Fredricksen as a child he's carrying a helium baloon. The baloon plays an important part in the meeting of Mr. Fredricksen & his wife; later, his job is selling balloons at the zoo. As if that's not hint enough, the cart keeps trying to float away whenever Mr. Fredricksen turns away. The movie has clearly established the balloon as Mr. Fredricksen's "magic item," something with which he has great power. The Popul Vuh establishes that the Maya Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque can do magical things with their blowguns, so when they hide inside the tubes from demon bats in Xibalba we're not surprised. And when Mr. Fredricksen blows cloud of balloons out his chimney, we're not surprised either.
The movie quickly gets us to the destination of Paradise Falls through the "knocked out during a storm" convention (with some help from the Boy Scout Russell's GPS, which is then literally thrown out the window). But it's what happens to the house then that illustrates best how Up uses magic. The house becomes a combination of a burden and a crutch to Mr. Fredricksen, as does his traveling party, which quickly comes to include the giant bird Kevin and Dug the talking dog. He's on the ground but has the floating house by the garden hose, and won't let it drift away. He also can't climb up the hose to get back in, and neither can Russell. So he ties the hose to his back and walks to what he thinks the goal of his quest is, the Falls. The house lightens his load, so he's not carrying so much weight, and shields him from the rain. But it also drags behind him and bangs into things, and slowly it gets heavier and heavier as the balloons lose their helium. If it's not obvious already what this means, Mr. Fredricksen keeps talking to the house and calling it "Ellie." Because we know the house stands for something, the unlikelihood that its bouyancy would be exactly a few pounds less than Mr. Fredricksen's weight doesn't bother us in the least.
Again and again he is faced with choosing between loyalty to the quest he promised Ellie as a child that he'd fulfil and helping the new friends that he doesn't think he wants. Strictly from a narrative point of view it's a story where the protagonist thinks the goal of his quest is one thing (getting "Ellie" to Paradise Falls), but it's actually something else (rescuing Kevin the giant bird from the evil explorer Charles Limbergh Muntz). In a climactic scene he chooses to keep the house from burning up instead of helping Kevin escape from Muntz. Confronted by Russell, he yells "This is not my problem! I didn't ask for this!" having forgotten that the whole point of flying away to a mysterious part of South America is that you're asking for adventure.
From an emotional point of view, the story's entirely about building a new life after the person you built the old life with is gone. After he gets to the Falls and is essentially abandoned by those who tries to be his friend he finds that at the end of Ellie's Secret Adventure Book she thanks him for the adventure, and tells him to start a new one. He throws out all the things he put into the house with Ellie. We get a long shot of the two chairs they sat in together as the house flies away, now a maneuverable man-o'-war ready to board the enemy blimp and rescue Kevin.
This is magic to its core. Yes, the house is going to be lighter from the physical weight of things being thrown out, and we're aware of that. But what sticks with us is the emotional weight Mr. Fredrickson's shedding. No longer is he locking out the rest of the world so he can cling to the past. The core of traditional narrative is a character making a change. When Mr. Fredricksen lets go of what happened, he not only starts flying again, he flies faster than a motorized blimp and is more maneuverable than an airplane. Even his own age is overcome; a man who used to need a machine to go up and down stairs can now climb a ladder on the outside of a blimp balloon, and later can throw away his cane.
When narrative is on your side, it's quite easy to get people to believe in magic. Think of a con artist; he always has a good story. Similarly, every religion in history has a good story behind it; no one would believe otherwise. Fiction writers use the same techniques but "strictly for entertainment purposes" as they say on the box. Storytellers are like verbal stage magicians; we may not tell the crowd our tricks but we are honest about the fact that it's a trick. Humans are instinctively magical thinkers; the centuries-long battle of science is to overcome that tendency through rigorous observation and experiment.
In other words, the power of narrative makes people believe things possible that wouldn't have been before. When narrative overcomes the power of physics, of chemistry, of biology, of psychology, and even of regular common sense, that is magic.
The main rebuttal I can think of to this argument is that by defining magic this way, every good story is in its own way a little bit magical, and a little bit fantastical. This could bother some people. Me, I can live with it.
People who've written or extensively read fantasy knows there's a special art to including magic in a story. If, at a climactic scene of your fantasy novel, a protagonist who's fallen off a thousand-foot cliff is suddenly able to fly when you've never given any reason before to expect he has this ability then you've used magic poorly in your narrative.
So how do you make a character fly, and make it believable? Or more importantly when you're talking about fantasy set in a contemporary world, how do you change a character that can't fly into one that can? Just giving him a bunch of helium balloons will not do the trick. (In fact, I'd say this is the case even if you can do so in a completely scientifically plausible way; you're writing a story, not a physics textbook.) Since magic is by definition not realistic, the usual term to describe what we're aiming for is "believable."
The current conventional wisdom of how to make magic believable is that it has to have a "system." You have to plan out in advance what your magic can and can't do. You define all its limitations and requirements and necessary raegents. Then you demonstrate these in little ways all throughout the story, preferably in a way that is not totally obvious, so that when the magic is really necessary to advance your plot your reader is surprised and yet also convinced.
But the whole idea of establishing a "system of magic" has always bugged me. To begin with, in traditional mythological stories using magic there is rarely a system established. We don't need to know exactly how an evil sorceress can change Ulysses' crew into pigs, or how an evil fairy can put Briar Rose to sleep until a prince wakes her up. They just can. For that matter, classic fantasy novels don't really have systems of magic either. Can anyone explain to me what system of magic Gandalf was using? How about the White Witch in Narnia?
But more important, defining a magic system betrays a completely contemporary, non-magical way of thinking. Suppose I say that my character can fly if he's acquired three feathers of the Lost Eagle of the Mountain, said the appropriate ritual over a fire into which he's thrown a bag of the droppings of a Chromium Dragon and has spoken to his Bird Spirit in a dream. What I'm really doing then is simply defining an alternate form of technology that works every bit as predictably as the hard drive on my computer (probably a heck of a lot moreso). But magic is not supposed to be predictable. That's practically the definition: magic is when something happens that can't be explained. Clarke's famous dictum that technology sufficiently beyond our understanding is indistinguishable from magic is only true to a very limited degree. Indians who first encountered European "thunder sticks" might have seen them as magical the first few times they got shot at. But Indians were neither stupid nor childish, and realized very quickly they needed to get some guns of their own and figure out how to use them, which is just what they did. In no time the magic weapons just became advanced tech. Similarly, humans in a system such as I described above would very quickly create a breeding line of Lost Eagles, have entrepreneurial dragon-dropping patrols and a whole new profession of Bird Spirit Contact Therapists.
I suspect the whole "magic system" meme was a natural outgrowth of fantasy authors that grew up playing Dungeons & Dragons (like I did). D&D is a game, and a game operates by rules, or what's the point? Therefore, a +3 longsword always increases your probablity of inflicting damage by exactly 15%, and a Magic Missile spell can be cast exactly once by a first level "Magic User" (which has got to be least magical-sounding title they could have come up with for a wizard except perhaps "supernatural events technician").
By contrast, Up has no system of magic. In fact, the non-realistic events that occur are not even described as magical; they just happen. They can get away with this because it's an animation, and we're conditioned exempt cartoons especially from the laws of physics. But I'd argue that in traditional mythology made by societies who didn't have a clearly defined field of "science" from which to deviate, that's how magic was usually included. The word "magic" wouldn't even mean anything until it became an accepted norm that nature cannot operate outside certain very precise rules that we can define by observation (i.e. science).
But that doesn't mean that things can just happen for no reason. Almost from the moment we meet the character of Mr. Fredricksen as a child he's carrying a helium baloon. The baloon plays an important part in the meeting of Mr. Fredricksen & his wife; later, his job is selling balloons at the zoo. As if that's not hint enough, the cart keeps trying to float away whenever Mr. Fredricksen turns away. The movie has clearly established the balloon as Mr. Fredricksen's "magic item," something with which he has great power. The Popul Vuh establishes that the Maya Hero Twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque can do magical things with their blowguns, so when they hide inside the tubes from demon bats in Xibalba we're not surprised. And when Mr. Fredricksen blows cloud of balloons out his chimney, we're not surprised either.
The movie quickly gets us to the destination of Paradise Falls through the "knocked out during a storm" convention (with some help from the Boy Scout Russell's GPS, which is then literally thrown out the window). But it's what happens to the house then that illustrates best how Up uses magic. The house becomes a combination of a burden and a crutch to Mr. Fredricksen, as does his traveling party, which quickly comes to include the giant bird Kevin and Dug the talking dog. He's on the ground but has the floating house by the garden hose, and won't let it drift away. He also can't climb up the hose to get back in, and neither can Russell. So he ties the hose to his back and walks to what he thinks the goal of his quest is, the Falls. The house lightens his load, so he's not carrying so much weight, and shields him from the rain. But it also drags behind him and bangs into things, and slowly it gets heavier and heavier as the balloons lose their helium. If it's not obvious already what this means, Mr. Fredricksen keeps talking to the house and calling it "Ellie." Because we know the house stands for something, the unlikelihood that its bouyancy would be exactly a few pounds less than Mr. Fredricksen's weight doesn't bother us in the least.
Again and again he is faced with choosing between loyalty to the quest he promised Ellie as a child that he'd fulfil and helping the new friends that he doesn't think he wants. Strictly from a narrative point of view it's a story where the protagonist thinks the goal of his quest is one thing (getting "Ellie" to Paradise Falls), but it's actually something else (rescuing Kevin the giant bird from the evil explorer Charles Limbergh Muntz). In a climactic scene he chooses to keep the house from burning up instead of helping Kevin escape from Muntz. Confronted by Russell, he yells "This is not my problem! I didn't ask for this!" having forgotten that the whole point of flying away to a mysterious part of South America is that you're asking for adventure.
From an emotional point of view, the story's entirely about building a new life after the person you built the old life with is gone. After he gets to the Falls and is essentially abandoned by those who tries to be his friend he finds that at the end of Ellie's Secret Adventure Book she thanks him for the adventure, and tells him to start a new one. He throws out all the things he put into the house with Ellie. We get a long shot of the two chairs they sat in together as the house flies away, now a maneuverable man-o'-war ready to board the enemy blimp and rescue Kevin.
This is magic to its core. Yes, the house is going to be lighter from the physical weight of things being thrown out, and we're aware of that. But what sticks with us is the emotional weight Mr. Fredrickson's shedding. No longer is he locking out the rest of the world so he can cling to the past. The core of traditional narrative is a character making a change. When Mr. Fredricksen lets go of what happened, he not only starts flying again, he flies faster than a motorized blimp and is more maneuverable than an airplane. Even his own age is overcome; a man who used to need a machine to go up and down stairs can now climb a ladder on the outside of a blimp balloon, and later can throw away his cane.
When narrative is on your side, it's quite easy to get people to believe in magic. Think of a con artist; he always has a good story. Similarly, every religion in history has a good story behind it; no one would believe otherwise. Fiction writers use the same techniques but "strictly for entertainment purposes" as they say on the box. Storytellers are like verbal stage magicians; we may not tell the crowd our tricks but we are honest about the fact that it's a trick. Humans are instinctively magical thinkers; the centuries-long battle of science is to overcome that tendency through rigorous observation and experiment.
In other words, the power of narrative makes people believe things possible that wouldn't have been before. When narrative overcomes the power of physics, of chemistry, of biology, of psychology, and even of regular common sense, that is magic.
The main rebuttal I can think of to this argument is that by defining magic this way, every good story is in its own way a little bit magical, and a little bit fantastical. This could bother some people. Me, I can live with it.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Some other question Stephanopolous could've asked Rudy
In response to the outcry over the fact that he failed to ask a followup question when the man who was mayor of NYC said "Bush never had a domestic terrorist attack during his administration," Steph essentially said "oops my bad" on his blog. To which I suppose some people would say "hey, everyone makes mistakes."
As a public schoolteacher, I belong to a profession that is often accused of containing countless incompetents whose jobs are invulnerable. I can say from experience that's an exaggeration, but I'll acknowledge some truth. But to give an exact parallel to what GS did last Sunday, consider the following case: a student gets up in my class and writes "1/2 + 1/3 = 2/5," and I say "good work, Johnny!" If this happened during a formal observation it'd be a guaranteed "unsatisfactory," something that could put even a tenured teacher's career in danger.* But would Steph's bosses have even noticed without a public outcry? Hell, did they even notice anyway?
But was this an isolated incident? I say no, even if you only consider that interview, here's just a few of the questions a real journalist might have asked:
1) Why should Bam's top priority be a danger that kills less Americans per year than falls in the bathtub and choking on tortilla chips?
2) You say you want Bam's fight against terrorists to be "real, not rhetorical." But just previously you said "thank God he finally used the word 'war on terror.'" So who's really being rhetorical here?
3) As a former prosecutor and a member of the American Bar, do you believe the US criminal justice system or not? Can you see any danger in creating a special class of suspects to whom it doesn't apply?
And yes, I can accept there are answers to some of these questions that are at least within the range of sane debate (though mostly just barely). The point is these are the kinds of questions that are _routinely_ not even asked.
I'd like to hope this would be the week that people see that the Sunday Talk charade finally jumped the shark. But I'm not getting my hopes up.
* yes, tenure protects teachers' jobs. But there are many ways around these rules that are can be used by competent administrators, something the system lacks far more desperately than competen teachers. But that's another blog.
As a public schoolteacher, I belong to a profession that is often accused of containing countless incompetents whose jobs are invulnerable. I can say from experience that's an exaggeration, but I'll acknowledge some truth. But to give an exact parallel to what GS did last Sunday, consider the following case: a student gets up in my class and writes "1/2 + 1/3 = 2/5," and I say "good work, Johnny!" If this happened during a formal observation it'd be a guaranteed "unsatisfactory," something that could put even a tenured teacher's career in danger.* But would Steph's bosses have even noticed without a public outcry? Hell, did they even notice anyway?
But was this an isolated incident? I say no, even if you only consider that interview, here's just a few of the questions a real journalist might have asked:
1) Why should Bam's top priority be a danger that kills less Americans per year than falls in the bathtub and choking on tortilla chips?
2) You say you want Bam's fight against terrorists to be "real, not rhetorical." But just previously you said "thank God he finally used the word 'war on terror.'" So who's really being rhetorical here?
3) As a former prosecutor and a member of the American Bar, do you believe the US criminal justice system or not? Can you see any danger in creating a special class of suspects to whom it doesn't apply?
And yes, I can accept there are answers to some of these questions that are at least within the range of sane debate (though mostly just barely). The point is these are the kinds of questions that are _routinely_ not even asked.
I'd like to hope this would be the week that people see that the Sunday Talk charade finally jumped the shark. But I'm not getting my hopes up.
* yes, tenure protects teachers' jobs. But there are many ways around these rules that are can be used by competent administrators, something the system lacks far more desperately than competen teachers. But that's another blog.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
From the problems I wouldn't mind having department
Tor.com tries to inspire our pity with an article about fantasy and scifi authors whose fans are bothering them for their next book.
Umm, yeah guys, let me get out the world's smallest violin. But, honestly, forget about those of us who haven't even be able to sell our first book; maybe you'd all like to trade places with all those talented authors whose first books didn't sell well enough for their publisher to pick up their second.
I mean, congratulations to all of you successful authors out there. But why don't you take a moment to be thankful for your good fortune instead of bitching about it?
Umm, yeah guys, let me get out the world's smallest violin. But, honestly, forget about those of us who haven't even be able to sell our first book; maybe you'd all like to trade places with all those talented authors whose first books didn't sell well enough for their publisher to pick up their second.
I mean, congratulations to all of you successful authors out there. But why don't you take a moment to be thankful for your good fortune instead of bitching about it?
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