Kathleen, Kage and the Company

Kage Baker – like all of us pseudo, semi, by inclination, marriage, adoption and osmosis English people – wondered at the etymology and provenance of Boxing Day. While most Americans have barely heard of the holiday of December 26th, Kage was the sort of kid who read English history and childrens stories; you can’t make it through E. Nesbitt or Wind In The Willows – let alone Charles Dickens – without discovering Boxing Day.

Asking the grown ups what it meant only produced the old jokes about it being the day you throw out all the boxes, or return them to the stores, or put the Christmas decorations back into them … but all this was patently untrue in our house. It took days to clean up the tide of wrapping paper and boxes. No one ever returned anything that fell short of lethal; anything received fit somebody. And the decorations had been known to stay up until Valentine’s Day on busy years.

Mama, though, born of genuine Southern aristocracy, recalled that it was the custom to send the servants home with boxes of left-overs and old clothes. My Welsh grandfather and my Boston Irish grandfather both knew that the (legal) boxing season started the day after Christmas; relatives born in the 19th century are an extraordinary boon to the budding historian. Some basic research turned up the fascinating fact that Good King Wencelas in fact does his good deed on St. Stephen’s Day – which is December 26th.

Further research over the years ultimately revealed, though, that not even the English are entirely sure where the name originates. And the customs associated with the day are many and diverse. It’s true that the boxing season once started on the day. So does horse racing. In this modern age, rugby associations tend to schedule the first full game roster on December 26th, as well. So there is a wide sports association, of which no part has anything to do with actual boxes.

There is a long tradition of opening church poor boxes on December 26th and distributing their largess to the poor. Servants took boxes to work with them the day after Christmas to make it easier for the boss to give them leftovers (just like Mama said). In England, public places kept boxes about during the Christmas season for random donations and then gave away what they got the day after Christmas – the gentlemen asking Scrooge to “subscribe to the poor” in A Christmas Carol are apparently part of this tradition. I’d have thought all this charity would have done the poor more good before Christmas, but there was a class-conscious Victorian habit of only giving presents to the poor after you give them to your equals: goodies to friends and families on The Big Day, then gifts to the lower classes the next day.

Although, in medieval and Elizabethan times, the English nobility exchanged gifts on New Year’s Day, while the poor still got charitable distributions on the Feast of Stephen. But that was before the little mix up in (maybe) 1582, occasioned when Pope Gregory changed all the dates from the Julian to the eponymous Gregorian calendar. All the dates moved 10 to 7 days then – depending on whether your parish priest or landlord had any clear idea of what the date had been to start with – and so Christmas, New Year’s and St. Stephen’s Day all got a little bit confused … as did all their celebrants. Presents were clearly a part of the whole season, though, and people kept right on giving them.

Even the Romans have been blamed for starting the Boxing Day tradition – although no one seems to know quite why and how they might have done so. In England, the Romans ultimately get blamed for almost everything. What they didn’t do, the Druids did. But I’ve never heard of any Boxing Day traditions attributed to the Druids, unless you want to consider that one of the strewing herbs for the winter season is traditionally boxwood …

The bottom line is, nobody knows. Or everyone knows. The maze of scholarship here leads not to the center but to one of several centers – lots of quiet places with tidy lawns whereon to sprawl and eat leftover Christmas sweeties and wonder idly what day it is anyway.

And in that time-honored tradition I am now going to go evict the cat from the box where my Christmas presents are stored, retrieve the shortbread and my new book, and curl up for a good read.

Happy Boxing day, everyone.

Kage Baker liked contrasts – she liked to move quietly through the Christmas riot. Riots were the norm at Mama’s house – up to 3 generations running all around at the same time; cooking, eating, drinking, playing with all the new toys, reading out loud from all the new books, bringing out all the old jokes and quarrels. Kage would sit quietly in a corner with a rum and Coke, cuddling the tired kids and changing out batteries, like a woman letting a tidal wave wash harmlessly around her very toe-tips.

I retreated to her contemplative company whenever I could, but since I could drive, I was always Support Staff. Did we have enough rolls? Had we run out of ice? How about maraschino cherries, did we have enough for Kage’s cocktails  and all the Shirley Temples the babies demanded? And where the hell was the mustard? The solution to all of this was to send me out to find a store. I didn’t mind – the relief from noise was always divine – but it came to be axiomatic that I would hit something: a tree. A giant box. A Mercedes Benz. Hit all those and more all over the years, on bun runs for the holiday feast.

My misadventures were added to the holiday legends. There may have been some exaggeration involved  – the Christmas tree on the curb that I hit, for example, was not actually in flames at the time. I’d have seen it it, if it had been …

Last year’s Christmas Day – I have no memories. Nada, zip, el zilcho. I know where I was, I know who I was with; but I cannot remember a damned thing about the day. I have no idea what we ate for breakfast or dinner, though I am pretty sure I made sure Kage ate something. Maybe we went out … though I rather doubt it, as the 14 steps to our front door were beginning to assume their demonic aspect.

I think Kage spent the day watching The Hogfather and episodes of Jeeves. She loved P.G. Wodehouse. I read most of the Jeeves and Wooster stories to her the last month or two; they never lost the ability to make her laugh – for which mercy, Lord God of Authors, be pleased to add a star or two to Mr. Wodehouse’s heavenly crown!

I think some people called. Lots of people sent emails, according to the dates in my files. The weather may have been rather fine. I don’t really know. I have no clear or seperate memories between the moment in the ER when they told us about the tumor in Kage’s cerebellum, and the moment two days later when I delivered her to the hospital for emergency surgery.

I can only presume Christmas day was quiet, and that I spent it as I spent most of the last two months – sitting by Kage’s bed, holding her hand, holding a glass with a green bendy straw up to her lips. Giggling at Wooster and Jeeves, admiring the utter coolness of Sir Terry Pratchett’s Death – he was her favourite character. She always fancied tall lean men.

But I can’t pin a particular picture to a particular day. There was just one endless day, where I sat on the floor by the fold out couch and we talked and read and watched telly. Harry the parrot prowled round on the covers and nibbled on feet and stole Kage’s bendy straws. When one of us got tired – which happened like tsunamis, Bang! – we’d fall asleep, and I’d wake up across the foot of the bed like a hound, an endless loop of Berty Wooster or Mr. Teatime (pronounced “Te-AH-ti-me”) playing on the DVD.

It was the quietest Christmas day ever. Certainly quieter than today, for which alteration I am very grateful. Ray is woking on D & D stats from his new Players Handbook; Mike is building a model and making notes aloud on how he will cannibalize the parts for self-designed starships. A Christmas Story is playing for freaking ever on the telly, marking time until the Dr.Who Christmas Special comes on. Kimberly is chopping things into other things. One cat is snoring on my bed, while the other amuses herself by running out the back door and then crying to let in the front – over and over. Harry is singing very, very softly as he falls asleep, head turned round backwards to watch the TV between his own shoulder blades. The Corgi is also singing, lying under his pillow and warbling tenderly to the rawhide chew held clutched between his paws.

Very weird. Very peaceful. Very alive.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Kage Baker loved Christmas Eve. I mean, who doesn’t? There are so many joys and delights to it – the actual celebration is finally, finally starting: the special food, the presents, one’s best-beloveds on their shining-hearted best behaviour, the tender and hilarious traditions hauled out from the basement or the attic and made comfy on the living room couch. The rush is over and we can all settle down to why we do this in the first place – whatever your particular why may be. Be it Mithras or the Christ, the point is the Birth of the Light.

Sp you might want to bear that thought in mind and stop reading now. I have some things I need to say, but no one has to listen past the pretty part.

Kage and I usually celebrated a private dinner on Christmas Eve, as well, before dashing off to sisters’ houses the next day. It was a moment of quiet for us two professional aunties. Our own traditions, our own time. And I realize that I should be meditating in loving memory on those times today, while being grateful for the fact that I am also sitting in comfort and affection at my sister’s home – which she has opened to me, in true sororal generosity. I’m a lucky old tabby cat and I know that, I really do.

But … people are complicated, you know? I can’t deny that under my relief and gratitude and, yes, genuine healing, is a simmering rage. Why did this have to happen? Why did it have to happen at Christmas? When I look back at “where I was last year” the pain is astonishing.

In another 36 days, the year of Kage’s death will end. But this is now the hardest part, the final part, the days when hope was highest and thus had the farthest to fall. I’m not past it, not yet.

Last Christmas Eve, Kage was recovering well from her hysterectomy. We were home in Pismo Beach, and I had planned an especially fancy Christmas Eve dinner – because we knew she was too ill to make it down to Los Angeles. She had an appetite, even. But as the afternoon wore on, I got a stomach ache and she began to complain of a head ache. They got worse and worse as the day went on. Right after dinner, I started throwing up and she developed vertigo.

The next few hours were a descent into Hell. The pain in Kage’s head made her dizzy and nauseated; she had to be helped to the bathroom. I was evidently working on vomiting up my internal organs – I’d half-carry Kage into her bathroom, dash off to mine, throw up, dash back … we couldn’t keep it up. Finally, I dropped Kage.

She was much thinner by then, of course, but still 4 inches taller than I was: physics works, and I couldn’t lift her up off the floor. I’d have managed had she still been upright, but .. . we sat there on the bathroom floor crying and – yes – laughing at one another, and Kage said at last, “Oh, screw this all. Call the ambulance.”

And I did. And they came and took us both away to the Emergency Room. I was easily stabilized with nitro and fluids and some high-end Pepto Bismal, but they took Kage off for a CAT scan. And then they told us she had a new tumor. In her brain.

Merry Fucking Christmas.

She quietly insisted on going home; there was nothing anyone could do for her there that night anyway. We finally got to exchange gifts, and I made her up a bed in the living room so she could watch the Christmas Tree. She slept. I sat up and kept watch.

It was then I began to know she would die.

Kage Baker always felt there was a magic tip-point for Christmas. There was, she felt, a point in the proceedings where one suddenly felt “Christmas-y”. It had little to do with the the amount or quality of decorations, or presents, or even doing Dickens Fair – it was, rather, a magical energy that potentiated without warning somewhere between December 1st and 25th.

The weather had a lot to do with it, I think. Like a chrysanthemum, Kage needed some exposure to the cold and dark before she bloomed for the winter. A warm December left her drooping, no matter how picture-postcard perfect the California skies might be. You know those old fruit crate labels, showing an orange grove under a sunny sky with snow-capped mountains in the distance? Where we grew up, on the edge of the San Fernando Valley, it actually looked like that in the 1950’s – but unless there was the occasional north wind or a bit of frost, Kage just never felt like Christmas was coming.

At her ancestral halls in the Hollywood Hills, 50-odd steps led from the street to the front door, flanked by terraces and concrete urns. When  the steps went glassy or the water in the urns froze – and some years they did – then Kage was automatically in a Yuletide mood. We might have had oranges and lemons ripening in the yard – and some years they did that, too – but the touch of ice in the air was enough for Kage.

Lights had a lot to do with it, too. We didn’t always manage to get many lights up, though I don’t think there was a year when we went totally without … I remember my first year away from home, when Kage and I decorated a foot-tall pine bough with one string of lights, 7 bulbs long. There were two red, two green, two blue and an odd orange one. It was all we could afford, and all that would have fit on our midget tree, anyway. We had ornaments, though – boxes of free ones from the Santa Claus impersonator whose sleigh Kage and Mama had spent the summer painting – and my 1-room apartment was so tiny that just those 7 lights filled it with corruscating glory.

The outside lights were always important – at their greatest reach, they covered all four edges of the cottage in Pismo Beach; we blazed like a light house. But the heart of the deco was always the tree; a real tree, unflocked and smelling of wild woods, ever since that dwarf specimen the year we left home …

Over the years, the trees got bigger and the ornaments got stranger – purchased one by one, no two were alike and almost none of them were just round. Kage preferred the old-fashioned German kind, of silvered and painted glass: so we had a pickle and a walnut (with squirrel) and a malted milk; a basket of roses, a hot air balloon, a Martian squeeze doll, a sea horse, a model-T and a pink Cadillac and several ingenuously phallic rockets. There were a whole flock of odd birds, several deformed but lovely teapots, a cable car, a lily, a few goddesses, half a dozen kinds and queens of England plus the Red Queen from Wonderland. There was a clock face with no hands.

There had to be bubble lights. And some of the ordinary ones had to blink. Not all of them, not whole strings! Just a few, to lend an uneven twinkle to the gleam.

You could spend hours studying the panoply of wonders in those Christmas trees; Kage did. And that, I think, was what most reliably put her in “the Christmas mood” – the glittering, blinking glory of the tree. Even years when there were no presents under it (which sometimes happened), the tree itself was all the gift required to make her eyes light up as well.

I can’t claim to be feeling all that Christmas-y myself, this year. I miss Kage more dreadfully than I can describe; especially as last year she was so very, very ill … but the nights have been adequately cold and dark this month, and the lights have gone up on schedule. There are green boughs and twinkling lights in the living room, and the front porch is a nebula in the night.

The balance is teetering in the solstice wind. I may tip over yet.

Tomorrow: Christmas Eve

Kage Baker liked to retreat and fort up after Dickens Fair was over. Lots of us do – we’ve just spent 2 months at Extreme Christmas, surrounded by crowds, being as demonstrative as we can possibly be. Then there is the familial insanity of Christmas (whatever your especial familial insanity is), and maybe even a last dash to the New Year celebrations. If you are a dance until midnight sort of person … and who is not, from time to time?

At this point, collapsing is an appropriate reaction. We may not be under snow drifts here in Los Angeles, but it is still the deep heart of winter – in the best of years it is cold and dim, the days are brief and the nights very dark. Even in Los Angeles, the winter spreads out like smoke from the hills and diminishes the glitter and glow of the city; it’s just darker now.

And of course, literally, we are under a vast cloud cover right now. The Basin is the terminus for what the meteorologists are calling an “aerial river”. This evidently means a high-flying ribbon of endless water, pouring down along the arch of the sky and debouching onto Los Angeles like a god’s … fire hose. The City is drowning. The hills are walking, marching down the canyon roads in kilts of mud and swirling boulders, to close and hold every border they can find.

And just as I write this, the thunder has begun! The lights are flickering a little, the rain is coming ever harder, and the now the house is shaking to the jubilation of the storm! Cats are discreetly retreating under all the bedclothes, and the Corgi is running in circles barking madly … the parrot is unperturbable; he just gronks softly and fluffs out all his feathers.

Kage would be dancing around the living room in delight – nothing she liked better than a thunderstorm, especially when we were already cozily under cover and settled in for the day. Me, I’d be doing just what I am about to go do: make sure the lamps have oil and the candles are well-seated, save and post this, and go watch Fimbulwinter wandering the hills of Griffith Park.

Time to retire!

Tomorrow: Christmas is almost here

Kage Baker always said you might as well sleep through the Solstice Day. We were usually up late the night before, it was the middle of winter and often inclement weather; Los Angeles is apparently expending its entire annual rain budget in one swell foop, and the weather is currently the most inclement it has been all year.

It’s not raining hard at the moment, but neither is it clearing. The present default setting seems to be a soft, inexorable drip – just enough more than a mist to require you leave the windshield wipers on, but not so thick you can actually find a workable setting for the things. It’s dark, just dark enough to oversleep and then not know what time it is the rest of the day. It’s cold and getting colder, but is not yet cold enough to be bracing and excitingly wintry: it’s just uncomfortable.

Even Kage – fanatic writer – would have given up on this, and be either watching POTC movies or playing her beloved Monkey Island video games.

We’re in the dead, dark heart of winter. Time to fort up, light a fire, consume theobromos in all forms. And it is the longest night of the year. And the shortest day. In fact, there it goes …

Happy Solstice, everyone!

Kage Baker loved astronomical phenomena. Eclipses, comets, near object passages – they all fascinated and intrigued her. She loved anything odd in the sky, as a matter of fact, and was always thrilled to see the blimps slowly traversing the skies of Los Angeles and San Francisco (Which they do. Really. We have, on a global average, what can only be called lots of them in the California heavens.) Airplane banners totally zooed her, the more so since one can almost never make out what they say and so can make up messages from God and space aliens.

I got a nice little telescope in freshman year, and we used that thing for all sorts of observations until well into our twenties. We made nocturnal expeditions into dark and empty places to catch sight of comets; sometimes just up into the less-populated areas of the Hollywood Hills with small nieces and nephews, to give the kids their first glimpse into the spangled heart of the universe.

I don’t how many of them peered into the eyepiece and politely – and spuriously -assured us they did indeed see whatever celestial bauble we were showing off. But sometimes they really did realize that glowing patch of blurry fog was a comet or another world. The wonder in the little voices was unmistakable. And the night rides into strange places, the sleeping bags and thermoses of cocoa in the back of our pickup were fun, too.

I remember … turning the telescope around backwards, centering the image clumsily through the eye piece so it safely projected a solar eclipse on to a sheet of white paper. I was a senior in high school, I think; it was on the front porch, and Kage had culled this method from some library book. We watched the tiny image wane and then wax, as the air grew strange and full of orange shadows and we speculated hopefully on whether or not the tiny projected sun would set the paper on fire.

I remember … in the 1990’s coming home to Pismo Beach late night after night, from a Renaissance Fair in San Bernardino. We’d pull up in the driveway beside our microscopic cottage a block from the sea, and stand there a moment just breathing in the ocean air. Kage would point up and say, “Look, it’s still there!” And so it was, Hale-Bopp, I think; a cloudy jewel we watched all summer long, arcing low over the western ocean.

I remember … a bloody full moon rising from a brand-new ghostly mountain range of smoke as the L.A. Basin filled up from yet another fire. Ashes rained down for days. The red-yellow-green traffic lights turned black-orange-blue in the altered light. And the moon was as red as a giant highlight in a glass of wine, a glassy red bubble in the sky.

Tonight is the Winter Solstice, and a full moon, and a lunar eclipse. I’ve been anticipating it for the last month, since the viewing is supposed to be especially good here in Los Angeles: the Griffith Park Observatory is even opening late, to allow public viewing from its great bronze domes. However …

Other celestial phenomena have seized center stage here. Los Angeles in currently in the dripping maw of an enormous storm, with more on the (literal) horizon. We’ve already gotten close to half of our yearly average rainfall – it’s been raining for 5 days and is supposed to rain for at least 3 days more. What isn’t sliding down a hillside is flooding or burning – things always burn in L.A. during the winter rains, because the streets flood so the fire trucks can’t get through … in the Hollywood Hills, street are burning, flooding and sliding all at once: the trifecta win is to have a mudslide carry a burning tree into your living room and set your house on fire.

Above all this interesting soggy chaos, the moon is rising toward her rendezvous with a lover in a cloak of shadow. She will faint into his arms in a few hours, reclining in discreet darkness for the duration of their tryst – then shine forth renewed and glorious, spinning in her full glory on the very cusp of the solar year, where the sun begins his long fall back into the light.

And I will not see a thing. The clouds are so low I can’t see the hills, let alone the sky. But as the streets flood and the rain drums and the lightning flashes and the thunder rolls around the dark sky – at least I’ll know why. Nothing random this time, by God and Goddess! The Holy Marriage will be celebrated in the skies tonight, in a long slow dance of fulfillment and renewal …

And I’ll drink a toast to Kage while it is.

Kage Baker was as fond as anyone else of Last Day pranks. As long as they were in character and period and did not mess up anyone’s gig, she was all for a bit of last day mania. She pulled several herself over the years.

However, she’d have thought my attending Dickens this weekend to be a particularly puerile and self-indulgent kind of prank. I’d have placed more burdens on my splendid and over-worked folk, ruined their fun with worry, and basically given them one more big lumpy prop to pack out at the end of the day. Bad form, that.

It would have been fantastically dramatic to go to Fezziwig’s tonight and drop dead on the dance floor during the Last Waltz, or at the culmination of the Allelujah Chorus. But I’d have ruined the mood, the ambiance, the blow-off – and probably a few backs picking me up again; I weigh 20 stone.

Instead, I’m sending a love note: a song. Kage loved this song. So do I. It’s a carnie song about breaking down the show – if you’ve ever heard the great tent poles coming down, ringing like bells in the dark as the sets are struck, you know what it’s about.

It is The Last Day Song, a hymn to our cyclic passion, to the city of London/Chipping-Under-Oakwood/Brigadoon we build over and over and over. When we couldn’t coax anyone else into singing it, Kage and I would sing it ourselves. Once. We sang this song just once, on the last day, at the end of the day, and we did not repeat it – it is The Last Song.

In my head, though, I always hear it in Steve Aultman’s voice. I learned it from him in the salad days of Cyderman’s Fancy, and it was one of the few Last Day rituals that made me weep. It still does: not for sorrow or loss, but for beauty. For the rolling wheel of a living cycle. For the certainty that we’ll be back next year.

So here it is for the folks now just starting the last day of Dickens Fair. No one will be singing this there – it was our ritual, Kage and I, these last several years; we’d sit in a corner of the Parlour and sing it once, late on Sunday. Then we’d go off and watch the last few dances at Fezziwig’s, and sing the Alleluia Chorus.

Haul down, lads.

Haul down lads, pass the bevvy round lads,
“Ta’ra” to Sylvie, “Ta’ra” to Jean, we’ll soon be on the road,
Don’t think on what you’re leaving, don’t think on what you’ve found,
Just tear off the tilt, pull out the chat, we’ll find another ground.

Pull down lads, it wasn’t a bad ground lads,
We’ve made some brass, you’ve had a lass, it’s perhaps as well we’re going,
I know how it can hurt, lads, to leave her standing here,
For there’s often fears and there’s always tears, but you’ll be back next year.

Pull down lads, the sets are coming down lads,
The ox all packed and the dodgems stacked, a bite of scran then go,
We’ll leave it as we found it, they’ll soon forget we’ve been,
For we trade in fun and we go and come, we’re often scorned but seldom mourned,
I hope you know what I mean.

Dedicated with profound love and gratitude to Cyderman’s Fancy and all the sweet voices who sang Faires to bed over the many, many years.

Kage Baker was a big believer in Fate. She took signs seriously. She could even find them retroactively, noting after an event that some specific oddity or revelation had clearly been a contributing factor. She always said fortune-telling backwards was the easiest and most reliable, anyway.

She did not subscribe to any especial plan or rule of portents – no runes, no systems of birds and snakes; she knew the classic signs, and might remark on them – “Ring around the moon; it’ll be hot tomorrow”. But she didn’t actually believe it. She checked Weatherbug on her computer. As she remarked, ‘Red sky at night, sailor’s delight’ meant they’d lit the lamps on Maiden Lane and the lads fresh ashore could find the place.

No, Kage had her own set of signs and foretellings, culled from a lifetime of odd observations and convictions. Those continued to guide her. Blue cars were bad luck; she would not drive in one – her grandmother was tragically run over by a blue car. She wouldn’t watch opera because she’d been watching one on telly when John Lennon was shot. Looking at the street lights at the moment they came on was good luck, though I don’t remember why.

A blue heron meant money was coming (and I have never known this to fail, actually. Blue herons nest near me, in the L.A. River, and every time I see one, a royalty check comes). A hummingbird meant a good journey was in the offing; oranges by the side of the highway during a journey meant good luck on the road.Those big banners that planes tow over sporting events? Meant a message from God is on the way, an inspiration or idea. But a shooting star  – ah, that means a chunk of rock fell out of space and was burning up in the atmosphere. Kage longed to find a meteorite, but didn’t feel they were magic. Consistency was a hobgoblin she eschewed.

This is, of course, how human belief systems evolve. Something significant happens; inquiring minds analyze the event to determine why. Triggers and causative agents – often wrong, often arbitrary, but compelling – are assigned. The next time the significant event happens, the inquiring mind is preprogrammed to discern the same triggers. One of the things the human mind does best is see patterns: it’s downright compulsive about the matter, and will invent them rather than admit to chaos.

What made Kage’s system of omens unique was simply that she started from this first principle and made it up on her own. She took bits from tradition and folklore; but in her own mind, every one of them was based on personal observation. I’m not sure she would have trusted anyone else’s.

She also believed semi-firmly in visitants: about the firmness of good mashed potatoes, say. Not space aliens – those familiar with her work know that in her opinion, the infamous Greys are merely a branch of Homo sapiens. No, Kage believed in faeries, elves, the Good People, the Fair Folk, the Lurkers and Watchers and Shadow People that populate every edge of every human place. And she believed in angels.

Strange events have prevented me from attending the last two weeks of Dickens Fair. Stents apparently wandering around in my chest like small, dazed animals have caused most of it. But in the process, I have missed tule fog, flooded roads, epic traffic accidents, and now – apparently – a millennial storm headed for the Bay Area. As a friend suggested yestreday, maybe my guardian angel is working mysteriously to prevent me from getting into even worse difficulties than I have managed on my own … I guess sometimes, guardians have to settle for not as bad as it could be.

I am quite sure Kage would have felt these events were pre-determined, and I know she would have blamed my guardian angel for it all somehow. (Kage had a somewhat  combative attitude toward my guardian angel – she didn’t think he did a terrific job …) Nonetheless, although I am not at Dickens having Extreme Christmas fun, neither am I dead in a ditch. Or an emergency room. Or – in my opinion, worse – alive somewhere but having to call someone to come fetch me from the wilderness because I was an idiot and had a heart attack in the middle of nowhere. Someone moved big orange cones up to close that exit to Samarra.

Maybe it was an angel. Maybe it was a brownie or the lios-alfar or the little stupid guys from the hollow hills. Maybe it was String Theory or micro-mini-black holes or the Galactic Convergence. Maybe it was chance.

I don’t quite believe that, though. Kage wouldn’t have.

Tomorrow: Last Day of a Fair

Kage Baker loved the last weekend of Dickens. Partly because it was ending – one gets awfully tired, doing Extreme Christmas – but mostly because she felt it was usually the best one.

All the parts have settled in and melded together. (In wet years, they have melted together.) Most everything that can break has, and been mended, and can now be expected to last for two more days. You finally find all your jewelry and costume bits, and they fit! It can take 4 weeks for your corset to unshrink from the last dry cleaning and actually lace up properly …

So there is an ease to the performance, a wonderful flying sensation of eternity: we’ve done this forever! It will never end! I can live on beer and gingerbread and fried oysters and ribbon candy until the heat death of the Universe!

On the other hand, it is the last weekend. I think this is hardest on the younger folks, and the ones who have just (almost) survived their first Fair. They don’t have the ground-in conviction we old codgers and codgereux have, that this miracle can and will happen again. We old ones know in our bones that Extreme Christmas is immortal – hell, deeper than our bones; our DNA has been permanently altered by the Cherenkov radiation coming blue through the tinsel and faerie wings.

It’s hard. It’s a little sad. Luckily, it’s also busily insane, which is mightily distracting to the sort of pensive self-involved weeping best done behind stage as your last show comes off. (Aaaargh, howls the Mad Hatter as he falls  over you and off the end of the stage; could your universe please come to an end somewhere NOT in a traffic lane?) But for most of us, no sooner have the lights come up Sunday night than they have to also come down – the sets must be stripped, the props packed, the apports that have accumulated behind the Bar and on top of the Welsh dresser must be identified and returned to whoever lost them.

So there is also, this Last Weekend, a fevered determination to have MORE FUN before the work starts. Another beer or champagne or hot chocolate; another meat pie, another waltz, another kiss. Wear your ribboned bloomers to the Can Can and see if you can finally split them. Become Mr. Hyde (protip: dry Alka-Selzter tablets work fine, but Fizzies come in colours). Yes, yes, yes – be professional. The audience deserves the same show on the Last Day as they got on Opening – but let’s face it, brave hearts, they’re not gonna get it.

It’s impossible. The show has evolved, matured, and is about to transcend to a brand new state of existence. Have your fun. Make it good, make it period, make it professional – leave home the plastic and the modern jokes; entertain the audience honestly. But have fun. Be a little mad. Insanity is a necessary spice to creativity – and you’re all going to go crazy this weekend anyway, so by Jove! Create something while you do it!

I’ll be haunting the wings and the lanes of London, incorporeal, hand in hand with Kage Baker, watching you. Make it good, make it beautiful. Make it Art.

Tomorrow: Variations on a theme of weather and angels,  suggested by Luisa.