Kathleen, Kage and the Company

Kage Baker loved Lombard Street. It’s a good access route to and from the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, Fisherman’s Wharf, and even the financial district – it connects to Van Ness on one end. It’s lined with hotels and restaurants, and it even has two gas stations! Gas stations are hard to find in San Francisco; I’ve always suspected the locals’ cars run on gin, and the Shells and Arcos are only for the tourists.

I am in a nice little hotel on Lombard, one crunched into an angle of the hills that run down Gough, right before you drive off the edge of San Francisco into the Bay. As I said, the parking garage is mostly underground, on two separate, unconnected levels. You can look through the bars on each of them, like hamsters in a cage, but you can’t get from one to the other.

There is a serving stand as tall as me in the lobby, which looks like a birdcage put to the rack and then turned inside out – and it’s full to overflowing with elderly bananas. Three tiers of ’em. The room is nonetheless very clen and comfy, with a view out over Lombard and the Bay. The lights and the foghorns and the traffic noises are soothing.

Linn wanted somewhere interesting for brunch today. So I took her up Lombard through the Presidio, and so via side streets to Cliff House. Negotiating the Presidio was slightly awkward, as the middle section of Lincoln has been closed and replaced with a yawning pit full of machinery. Evidently the Morlocks are taking over. But I found a track down to Baker Beach, and it was clear after that.

Cliff House is a wonderful place. It has three distinct restaurants on site, and today we ended up in the frighteningly chic one. The place is right on the cutting edge of “Bring weird is not enough”, and the clientele (largely tourists) looked half-afraid of the wait staff as well as the food. Luckily, Linn is from New York and I am an arrogant old biddy – we both see weirder things all the time. Although the whole, eviscerated mussel floating in my corn chowder was a little odd – looking disturbingly like some yonic symbol – it was tasty.

However, I cannot recommend the elegant miniature tamales. They appeared to be made of corn pops boiled into a pulpy mass. Or maybe they were hominy grits. Too weird. Even with the little garnet beads of red-dyed salt scattered over things. Tamales should not be made with hominy grits.

But Linn loved the back streets, the elegant neighborhoods of Sea View and the Sunset District; and the interesting hovels of the same. The blocks of restored Painted Ladies along Felton delighted her. The Safeway hidden below the edge of Sutro Park pleased her, too.

The sun has yet to come out, and I am delighted. This fortress of fog was just what I needed after the griddle LA has been lately. Now I am off to SF in SF, and the giant Pixar statues that stand sentinel beside its stage …

There’s usually a bowl of M&M’s around there. Yum.

***********DISCONTINUITY***********

Linn decided to take a cab to Variety Arts Building, so as to spare me the driving. I should have realized that she lived in New York until a month ago … she was dumfounded when no cab arrived within 10 minutes. She was waxing apoplectic when none had come in 20. We finally got one, and the driver had dyslexia or something and initially tried to drop us off three blocks from our destination. Adventure time!

But at last we made it to the corner of Market and 2nd, where the venue hides behind a modest, street-level lobby. Outside stands an inexplicable monument that Kage especially liked: bronze winged victories, assorted bears, what might be a sailor bold or might be a badly dressed printer holding a broadsheet up to dry … and at one side, coiling up the base, a large octopus. It might be a monument to Cthulu; we were never sure.

The evening went charmingly, the new book of Kage’s silent movie reviews looks great, and tomorrow anyone who comes to Borderland Books between 2 and 4 can get a free copy! Andif you can’t make it, it will be available as of Monday from Tachyon Publications for $15.99.

And now my brain is shutting down from exhaustion and sensory overload. Good night, all!

Kage Baker loved San Francisco. She loved any excuse to visit, and loved it most when she began to have bookish business there.

I am more than passing fond of the place myself. And I am thrilled to be here now, getting ready for various bookish things on Kage’s behalf.

Though I screwed up, Dear Readers – the SF in SF reading was not tonight, it’s tomorrow night. And the Tachyon birthday party and readings are on Sunday. My brain has evidently melted in the recent heat, and leaked out my ears …

But I am here! I had a lovely drive up I-5,  of which I will share details tomorrow – I have been running like a madwoman since I made it to San Francisco about 2 PM and extricated Linn from the clutches of the baggage claim. She got a wild tour of the City while we fought our way through Friday traffic – I finally found our hotel on Lombard, AND its parking lot: which is apparently underground in a parallel dimension. I am presently parked in Pellucidar – but it’s free, which is almost unheard of in San Francisco!

I took Linn to dinner on Pier 39, where we had cocktails in Kage’s honor. Something called a tequini – a martini made with tequila and blood oranges and cherry juice … very Kage. Very virulent. Very, very vermillion … Linn was charmed with the steel bands, and buskers in Panto Horse suits and anime costumes, and the dark bulk of Alcatraz looming out of the mist.  She liked Coit Tower, too, which is lit up in red, white and blue for 9/11 and looks a lot like a Bomb Pop. And she really liked  the hilariously awful souvenir shops, and the blow up sex doll shaped like Edvard Munch’s The Scream. Only in San Francisco, man.

But it’s nearly midnight and I want to get this in so I don’t miss my daily mark. I’ll have more to report tomorrow, Dear Readers, when I am not so madly travelling.

For now … the recorded fog horns are sounding out in the Bay, and the lights of Lombard are warm and bright, and the sound of the traffic is soothing.

Time to go to bed. More adventures tomorrow!

Kage Baker was very, very fond of Tachyon Publishing – they are wonderful people in general, and they published her children’s book, The Hotel Under the Sand. And they are based in San Francisco, which was one of her favourite cities.

She also loved Borderlands Books, an indie bookstore of incomparable grace and glory. The folks at Borderlands have long been Kage’s friends; and they, too, are in San Francisco – in the charming Mission District. (They have Ripley, a Sphinx cat, on staff, and she is incredibly cool … not literally, but, you know – spiritually.)

And Kage was also very fond of a series of monthly readings called “SF In SF”. They happen on Fridays, in the Variety Arts Building on Market. I cannot recommend them enough – great venue, nice people, giant Pixar statues, and a bar! Kage read there several times.

And summer, of course, is the best time to drive North on the infinite strangeness of Interstate 5 …

Tomorrow, I will be driving up to the City By The Bay (like there is only One Bay and One City). I mean to attend this month’s SF In SF, in the company of Kage’s (and my) agent, the patient Linn Prentis. We will also be going to the Tachyon annual Birthday Party, which will be held at Borderlands Books. It’s from 2 to 4 on Sunday afternoon, and Tachyon is 16 this year. They can drive now!

There will be a special Kage Baker surprise unveiled at the party: the collection of her silent science fiction and fantasy movie reviews, entitled Ancient Rockets. I will also be reading from it, but don’t let that discourage anyone in the area from attending – it will be fun nonetheless, and other, interesting people will be there as well. Nancy Kress! Jack Skillingstead! The extraordinary Peter S. Beagle! And some cake and stuff, plus Jacob Weisman and his wonderful Tachyon staff.

So tomorrow, early on, I shall commit my Cruiser and my luggage to the mysteries of I-5. It will be appallingly hot and yellow and dry – but the very home and source of fog waits for me at the end, and that hope will sustain me. There will be mirages beside the road, glimpses of unknown cities, scents of invisible crops; sun dogs will hover in the sky like rainbow nebulas, and prisms will run after all the long arching irrigation sprinklers.

I’ll be living on iced coffee and singing at the top of my lungs. And I will check in with all you, Dear Readers, to let you know what lovely madness I encounter on the long road. Time to dance in the streets!

Kage Baker loved the heat; but then, she had a lot of weird habits …

Even she disliked the September heat wave, though – she’d somehow fasten her yard-long braid on top of her head, dress in silk pajamas and direct her favourite Casablanca fan right at the back of her neck. When it got too hot by the living room windows, she’d finally consent to draw the shades over the sight of the boiling sea, and grumpily watch movies in the artificial twilight. Come nightfall, we’d open all the windows, light the lava lamps and brainstorm – too hot to do anything else.

Despite the fact that it is part of the natural cycle here, I hate the September heat. It happens every year – as soon as kids go back to school, the temperature in Los Angeles shoots up over 100 and the sun increases at least a degree in magnitude. In fact, there’s a brand-new nova going off in Ursa Major right now – you can see it in the northwest right after sunset, with mere binoculars: really! – and I am sure that sucker is adding its mite to the heat quotient as well.

The new tar patches in the streets are melting, and being sucked right out of the potholes by the wheels of passing cars. The camphor trees smell like scorched incense. Harry keeps sitting in his water cup (sensible bird) and so looks horrible – a little demon quetzelcoatal, all his feathers slicked down over his alien skeleton. The cats’ bones have dissolved, and the Corgi is looking at us with big sad brown eyes that say “I’m almost ready to let you shave me bald …”

Me, I’m just waiting for the temperature on Weatherbug to hit 100, so the display will turn red and start pulsing. You gotta take your fun where you can when it’s this hot, you know? That Corgi may end up naked yet.

At least I’m no longer in school or navy blue wool uniforms. And the air is much better in LA than it used to be – when we were in grade school, you could see the smog hanging in the streets at roof level. I remember sitting and watching – we were not allowed on the school yard in this weather – and you could literally watch visible waves of it, transparent grey and brown smoke, rolling over the grubby red tile roof of the church … pigeons fell out of the palm trees, splat.

Mark Twain complained that everyone talked about the weather but no one did anything about it: which is wrong, people do all sorts of things. It’s just that none of them make any difference. Even if you strip naked as your Homo habilis ancestors, you still have to sit or stand on something – and that will be too hot and you’ll stick unpleasantly to it. In the meantime, though, you’ll be trying out every light garment and iced drink you own, none of which will do any good – but you can’t really be accused of doing nothing. So take that, Twain; you in your tropic whites and planter’s chair and damned mint julep.

Even Kage would be lying about gasping by now. Waiting for the sun to go down, or preferably out – so we could turn on the Official Lights of the Weird, and see what  crazy stories evolved out of the day’s heated delirium …

Kage Baker really enjoyed apps – those little, OCD, insanely focused programs that do one handy thing for you. She never got to indulge in an iPhone, but it was on her list of Things To Do when the time and money coincided; and her choice was mainly predicated on the wonderful little toys our friends showed her on their phones.

Virtual musical instruments (Kage always wanted a concertina or a hurdy-gurdy). Masks. E-books in general, but since her main love was always the illustrations, she wanted to wait for something with really good colour and resolution. I think she would have needed an IPad, really, for the art she wanted to see. (So will you, Mr. Gillan – you need room to get the details on those blue prints of star forts.) Kaleidoscopes. Flashlights. Compasses.

The level program was on the list – several of our friends at Faire had level apps on their phones, because Faire is the sort of theatre where you have to build your own venue to perform at all. Map apps fascinated her, too – in a practical way, of course, because it’s always good to be able to locate somewhere to buy 3-inch nails or impulse wall paper or potted palms. But also just for fun.

Kage loved maps. The expansion of interactive Google programs was one of the great delights of her later years – she’d sit in front of her computer screen and just zip along roads and riverbeds, exploring the countryside with omniscient glee. When she got her Buke – the little notebook computer that fit in her purse – she had the worlds, literally, at her fingertips: one of the things she did for amusement was to pull up a street view of somewhere we were traversing in real time and compare the two images with one another as we drove … it made her motion sick, but it was also (she said) real time travel, and she loved it.

I’ve never heard of anyone else doing this … and let me tell you, it can be very informative and entertaining. Also weird, as Kage commented on new paint jobs, taller (or missing) trees, graffiti, and all the other changes between her Buke and her view out the passenger-side window. And yet I know lots of other people do things like this – there are numerous Web sites dedicated to the inadvertent glimpses of life the avid Google-watchers have found while perusing those millions of still photos. The difference with Kage was that she wasn’t interested in exposing anybody’s foibles – she just wanted to know for knowledge’s sweet sake.

And when Google Earth added Mars and the Moon, she really went crazy. Where the Golden Apples Grow had a lot of its landscape born from actual views of Mars, where Kage followed the roads in her mind past the actual scarps and cliffs of Mars.

What she really, desperately wanted was a  good map program she could create with – to make worlds all her own. She experimented with various garden and landscape and cartography programs over the years, but never found one she liked. Nothing was flexible enough, or allowed her to draw as well as she could with a pencil or a pen. Even a cheapo Croquill dipped in Higgins Black (the nadir of ink) gave a better line than Kage ever found with a mouse. She had hopes for the smart phones, though, with their touch pads and the like.

One of the programs she loved was Weatherbug. It’s a simple-minded little weather program, but it does show barometric pressure and storm fronts and Doppler rader. Kage loved Doppler radar … doing re-enactment theatre usually entails a lot of time out of doors, you see; you get as paranoid as any farmer over heat and  win and rain. Will the crowds be scared away? Will we be flooded? Will the roof blow off? (All of which happened more than once.) Will the temperature get dangerous? Weatherbug has the charming feature of having its temp display turn scarlet and pulse when it gets over 100 degrees: Kage rather liked that, even when she was stripped to her chemise and sweating buckets – it was so dramatic.

It’s skimmed that area today, though it’s only 97 right now, right here. Elsewhere in the L.A. Basin, it’s still well over 100, and there are lying thunderheads piling up in the East. N rain will come of it, though – just more dry lightning and hot winds. It’s fire season now.

That shows on the live maps, too. I think I’ll go get a refreshing cold coffee drink, and watch the numbers flicker for a while. It’s too hot to do anything but play …

Kage Baker would have loved the weather lately – here in California, anyway. We’ve gotten the edge of a storm from New Zealand, a great river of tropical air that has passed over white sand and blue water to get here; the sky is full of clouds with patterns like moire silk, and the air is soft enough to stroke.

True, it’s also 91 degrees and the humidity is much too high – but the tropical atmosphere has a definite charm. Shed enough clothes and drink enough cold fluids and this is a treat. Certainly it’s better than the rest of the United States right now – we’re neither drowning nor on fire, and our continuous  little earthquakes don’t even worry us, let alone make the news. (We had a 4.2 a few days ago, and a  heat rash of 2’s and 3’s runs up and down the state every day.)

Kage depended on cold Coca Cola to keep her going. Hell, even when frost was forming visibly on the windows, she drank Coke – it was her fuel. No other cola would do. She’d turned to Coke Zero when it appeared on the market, because it tasted more like real Coke than any other reduced calorie stuff – but when word got out that Mexican Coca Cola was using real cane sugar …! Kage was ecstatic.

The only places we could find it were Costco and some of the weirder rare soda stores here in LA, but we made the pilgrimages. The last year of her life, that was the only Coke she drank – as she pointed out, what the hell did she have to lose? Weight was dropping off her, so she sure didn’t need diet soda anymore!

Alcohol, alas, was forbidden her, but I used to put umbrellas and grimacing tikis in her drink glasses anyway. I think she liked the trappings as much as the rum … and she developed a fondness for the various flavours of Gatorade, so we could keep up the rainbow potables for her amusement.

Iced tea was out of the question, too, because the only kinds she liked were Snapple brews: they all had green tea in them, and you can’t drink green tea when you’re on chemotherapy. The stuff is so effective, it helps the cancer cells resist the chemo – how’s that for an advertisement, eh?

Me, I have always been fond of plain old cold water. I’m just not very interesting … I like whiskey, but it’s simply not a hot weather drink. Besides, I’m not supposed to drink alcohol right now (thank you, damned heart), which also rules out my personal favourite: beer. I drink a great deal of coffee every day – good stuff, too, I’m a dreadful snob –  but when it gets into the 90’s like this, one longs for something cooler.

At one point, Coke made a coffee-infused cola – Coke Blak. With an umlaut or something over the O. It came only in elegant little 6-ounce bottles, in measly four packs: it was as black as ink, had a very slight body to it, and tasted fantastic. I don’t like soda – but I liked that. I could guzzle it like Kage gulped an icy ordinary Coke, and get 10 times the buzz. And its Mexican version (usually available here in Los Angeles) was also made with good old cane sugar.

Alas, I haven’t been able to find it in over a year. It was the only Coke I ever liked, a wonderful hot weather drink, and it has vanished into foreign lands and the Twilight Zone. In desperation, I have found that a 1 to 3 mix of strong coffee and regular Coke, served very very cold, can approximate it. It’s not quite the same, though.

But then, as we get older, very little is. Is it? I understand Kage a lot better now, her fierce insistence on not losing things the way they used to be … I’m not tracking down childhood favourites on EBay, like she did, but I surely would like to find Coke Blak again. Not even the Vermont Country Store has it: though I’ve found HerbalEssence shampoo and wax Halloween vampire lips and Bluegrass perfume there. Also Glass Wax. And Tangee lipstick. And Garibaldi biscuits. They’re the provisioners of memory, those guys at Vermont Country Store.

For now, though, I’ll have to keep pouring my own Coke Blak. With a bottle of Mexican Coke, of course, to improve the flavour.

Kage Baker didn’t think things ought to end. She appreciated the rhythm of cycles, that  life-death-rebirth thing, the spring to winter path. What she didn’t like was endings. It was one of the reasons she invented Dr. Zeus and the Operatives, to save what would be otherwise lost.

She pretty much refused to tolerate the steady march of chaos.

Kage said that kind of thing was just too depressing to put up with: the heat death of the universe, the slow decay of inevitable entropy. One day in our teens (on one of those endless summer afternoons when you’re 15 and solve all the mysteries of life), she asked me how long the Universe was expected to last. I was the science fan, I read that kind of thing. When I first told her about the then-extant concepts – how the most current model of the Universe had it just spreading out until it was an infinite soup of cold hydrogen, one atom thick everywhere – she was outraged.

All that sturm und drang of the Big Bang, and then it dissolves into next-to-nothing? No way, averred Kage. She held out instead for the Big Crunch option, where the Universe reaches its limit and then springs back like a bungee cord: SNAP! And then, as Mr. Grimaldi said, here we are again! A constantly repeating Phoenix’s nest and fireworks display: that’s what Kage firmly envisioned. Dissolution was for weenies.

I first told Kage about that – the Big Crunch alternating with the Big Bang – way back in high school: at least, the few crumbs of information I had proudly gathered by age 15. Interestingly enough, it has evolved  more acceptance since then., from people who hopefully know more about it than I did. Maybe physicists are no happier with the idea of the End of Everything than Kage was.

Kage was concerned about the passage of time. And she had a curious trick of prophecy.

She saw the current social insanity rampant in the UK  coming – ASBOS, universal surveillance, intolerance of children or public displays of affection. She predicted the growing fundamentalism burning higher in the US, and the rise of a New Puritanism. She foretold the return of the No-Nothings, as people (Americans, in particular) grew ever more arrogant about being stinking ignorant. She predicted the rising tide of Animal Rights carried to insane extremes: outlawing aquariums. Calling domestic animals “dependents”. Turning thousands of farmed minks loose in the countryside to savage poultry and be run over by trucks – and that last one has happened two or three times now.

I keep hoping she’ll turn out to have been right about the Moslems going Amish, but it hasn’t happened yet. Still, the Arab Spring is bearing strange and wonderful fruit; pacificism and tolerance may yet blossom. The loss of a few tyrants is good no matter what.

Kage’s hunch that Mars would hold more water than we expected has proven accurate, too. I’m not sure if it was something she tossed in because her storyline needed it – relict water was a necessity to make Empress of Mars work – or if she hopefully conflated something in the early data coming back from the rovers. It doesn’t matter, because the later reports have shown she was right. There was a lot of water on Mars in the past, and the proof is still there. Better yet, it appears a lot of the water is still there, frozen in cliffs at the poles – two continents of potable water, under the glaciers that are the breathing air. The Truckers may yet roll to bring them home.

And Mars does have the isolated cyclones she postulated. We knew, peering from a distance, that dust storms could rise to veil half the planet at a go – it turns out the smaller, lither eye storms can form locally, too. Kage watched dust devils dancing across the stony plain inside Gusev Crater, over and over, like an enraptured hunter in a blind – she built the Strawberry out of that.  And you can watch them here:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spirit/20050819a.html

Even her guess that the heart of Mars had not yet cooled was right. At least, it appears to be – there is evidence that Olympus Mons may yet hide a reservoir of molten stone. Whether or not lava chambers exist to be blown up has yet to be seen (and will hopefully be avoided), but Kage’s estimate of Olympus Mons’ ability to do it is looking vaguely possible.

Certainly, her assertion that space flight would have to be made profitable is coming true. NASA is leaning more and more on robots, and splendid machines they are. But the human exploration of space is coming more and more to rest in the hands of private men – men with money and dreams and no bosses, who are even now testing rockets and building a space port in New Mexico.

Here and now, with the leaves beginning to thin and rattle, with the Hollywood Hills roasting under storm clouds all the way from New Zealand, I think inevitably about changes. How Kage disliked them, but how she domesticated them into her own life: she took the best parts, as far as she could, and built them into a future that really does have a happy ending. Think about the last scenes in her last Company novel: everyone finds true love and closure and redemption – or at least a date. Evil is punished. Virtue is rewarded and given an upgrade.

And nothing ends. Not really. Not forever. The Company – and Kage – have the blue prints for everything.

Kage Baker would still be glowering at the new month today- it’s only 3 days old, it hasn’t mellowed into fall yet. She’d still be howling with despair at the crepe myrtles, gaudy exhibitionists advertising the end of summer. There are probably Halloween displays up already in some stores, but most of them are still cruelly flaunting college-lined notebook paper and backpacks …

Despite which, today the weather has decided to preview fall most delightfully. It’s cooler but not cold; there is a faint wind; and the light has the crystalline quality that hints at the coming of frost. Northern light, Kage always called it; a trace of ice in the light, if not the air, giving a crispness and sharpness to all the distances. By the end of this weekend, it’s supposed to be back into the 90’s in parts of Los Angeles – especially the Hollywood Hills, Kage’s ancestral hunting ground – but right now it is a perfect autumn day.

It’s also International Bacon Day, the celebration of which is simply obvious: EAT A LOT OF BACON. It’s my spiritual duty, and I feel a definite mood of ecstaticism coming over me. Eat your heart out, John of the Cross; Teresa de Avila, I’ll give you a run for your money.

When not eating bacon, I can indulge my native Welsh depression by reading The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. (http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/). This creatively dark tome will make your head implode – just suck in on itself until you look like a week-old jack o’lantern in a hot October, zshwuuuppp. If you’re one of those folks who enjoys a bit of nihilistic mournfulness at the turning of the year, check this out. It’s a definite autumnal kind of book. And if you cannot press your inner Shirley Temple flat under it, you’ll find it hilarious.

So what happened today? Lots of horrible things in WWII and the American Civil War. On the other hand, Frederick Douglas escaped from slavery. In Sweden, the entire country changed from driving on the left to driving on the right – overnight. Must have been exciting.

Historically, today was a bad day for Britain. It’s the anniversary of the crowning of Richard Coeur d’lion and (in a later year) the appointment of Richard Cromwell as Protector of England after Oliver Cromwell died. September 3rd is the first date the American flag was flown in battle, and the date the truce was signed between the nascent USA and Great Britain. And it’s Independence Day in Qatar, which broke from the UK in 1971. And in 1666, the Royal Exchange burned down in the Great Fire of London.

Oh, and in Canada it’s Merchant Navy Remembrance Day. In case you forgot them …

Not an exciting day, really, save for watching the weather decide what season it belongs to. While September makes up its mind I am going to go indulge in some low-level jalopia. And eat bacon.

Kage Baker wasn’t fond of the month of September. At least, not the beginning of it; the beginning of September is the end of summer – practically, if not by the calendar – and she hated that. The advent of Labor Day depressed her, with the inevitability of school looming beyond it. She even disliked the crepe myrtle trees, because they always start blooming around then and their exuberance meant her holidays were almost over.

When she grew up, of course, the summer liberties were in hiatus for many years. But summer was still the season of freedom, and how she hated anything that encroached on that! September would always see her grouching about for a week or two, resentful. I’m mumping, she would growl. I’m mourning the sun.

It’s 98 degrees out there! I might protest.

Yeah, but not for long … and she would glare at the turning leaves and autumn flowers.

In summer, though there was no 3-month vacation, there were Faire weekends. In fact, the 3-day Labor Day weekend usually fell near the end of the Northern Faire, and so it was laced with a faint bitterness as well. The leaves turned, which was glorious – but then they fell off, which was not. The weather got weird – the usual California pattern is enormous smothering heat followed at once by cold and frost somewhere between Labor Day and Halloween – Kage resented losing the warm weather. Apples got gloriously profuse and diverse, but the plums vanished utterly. Pumpkins appeared between the sad runners of the last blackberries.

But by the time October was heaving on the horizon, showing the bold black and white bones on its flag, Kage was ready for the darker seasons. Halloween was coming! Thanksgiving! Christmas! The season of nights, whose purpose (as far as she was concerned) was to be made loud, fragrant and bright with coloured lights.

It was the pivot of September that was hard. It was like a swinging door that hits one in the face. She rather looked down on effete afflictions like Seasonal Affective Disorder and other such megrims and swoonings; but that first step into autumn was always a long one for her. It took her a while to adjust, to get her happy face on for the long string of winter festivals – though once she did, Kage was a dedicated party girl.

It’s all the stranger, to me, that she should have felt this way, because Kage was almost certainly conceived in September. It was probably on one of those hot late summer nights when the sky over the Hollywood Hills glows with its own fevered light. Momma’s house had French doors on every floor and must have glowed like a wedding cake on such a night – a bright lure to the passing soul needing embodiment.

Or maybe, even then, Kage resented the curtailment of her summer freedom; maybe the great white glowing walls on the hillcrest were a dazzle and a distraction to her. Maybe she didn’t want to be harvested that September, laid away for a new life the following June … it would have been just like her, to remember it always afterwards and resent poor September for its role in the affair.

Good thing it runs straight on into Halloween. If not, Kage might never have consented to be born …

Kage Baker had a special, personalized ritual for every season, every holiday. And most months.

September required a drive North. We took provisions of the last plums, the first cider,  Empire and Burgundy apples, local cheese and sourdough bread. We would drive until the road North was barely wider than our car. Then we’d stop and get out where the sea crashed only yards below us; we’d stand on cliffs of sandstone and nephrite, where the edge of the continent crumbled into green and golden pebbles under our toes.

And in harmony, we would sign the hymn to September:

Now is come September, the hunter’s moon begun

And through the wheaten stubble is heard the frequent gun

The leaves are pale and yellow, and kindling into red

And the ripe and bearded barley is hanging down its head

       All among the barley, who would not be blithe?

      When the ripe and bearded barley is hanging on the scythe.

  The spring is like a young man who does not know his mind

The summer is a tyrant of most ungracious kind

The autumn’s like an old friend, who loves one all he can

And he brings the bearded barley to glad the heart of man.

  Ch.

The wheat is like a rich man, it’s sleek and well-to-do

The oats are like a pack of girls, laughing and dancing too

The rye is like a miser, it’s sulky, lean, and small

But the ripe and bearded barley is monarch of them all

  Ch.

Now is come September, the hunter’s moon begun

And through the wheaten stubble is heard the frequent gun

The leaves are pale and yellow, and kindling into red

And the ripe and bearded barley is hanging down its head

Ch.

The harmony is silent, except in my head. But I have bread and apples and cheese. And North is still there.

So … Closing Early For Maintenance. Now is come September.